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THERE are some things that cannot
be generally told — things you ought to
know. Great truths are dangerous to
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and accomplishment in the hands of
those who understand them. Behind
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of the ancients, lie centuries of their
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mastery of life’s problems. Once shroud-
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WORLDS OF

SCIENCE FICTION

JANUARY 1960

All Stories New and Complete

Editor: H. L. GOLD

Feature Editor: EREDERIK POHL

NOVELETTES

THE DIVERS by Jomes Stamers

18'

THE LAST LEAP by Daniel F. Golouye

CULTURAL EXCHANGE by J. F. Bone

110

SHORT STORIES

THE GOOD SEED by Mark Mallory

DISSOLUTE DIPLOMAT by Bob Show and Walt Willis

THE LITTLE RED BAG by Jerry Sohl

TO EACH HIS OWN by Jack Sharkey

THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT by Margaret St. Cloir

101

FEATURE

WORLDS OF IF by Frederik Pohl

COVER by Emsh; “Take Them to Oor leadersi"

Illustrations by Wood, AAorrow and Froncis

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Title registered in the United States Patent Office.

Next Issue (Marehl on Sale January Sth.

By MARK MALLORY

The island was drowning

— if they failed to find
some common ground, both
of them were doomed.

They said — as they have
said of so many frontiers-
men just like him — that there
must have been a woman in
his past, to make him what he
was. And indeed there had,
but she was no flesh-and-blood
female. The name of his lady
was Victoria, whom the
Greeks called Nike and early
confounded with the Pallas
Athena, that sterile maiden.
And at the age of thirty-four
she had Calvin Mulloy most
firmly in her grasp, for he

had neither wife nor child,
nor any close friend worth
mentioning — only his hungry
dream for some great accom-
plishment.

It had harried him to the
stars, that dream of his. It had
driven him to the position of
top survey engineer on the
new, raw planet of Mersey,
still largely unexplored and
unmapp^. And it had pushed
him, too, into foolishnesses
like this latest one, building a
sailplane out of scrap odds and
ends around the Mersey Ad-
vance Base — a sailplane which
had just this moment been
caught in a storm and cracked
up on an island the size of a
city backyard, between the
banks of one of the mouths of
the Adze River.

The sailplane was gone the
moment it hit. Actually it had
come down just short of the
island and floated quickly off,
what was left of it, while Cal-
vin was thrashing for the is-
land with that inept stroke of
his. He pulled himself up,
gaping, onto the rocks, and,
with the coolness of a logical
man who has faced crises be-
fore, set himself immediately
to taking stock of his situa-
tion.

He was wet and winded, but
since he was undrowned and
on solid land in the semi-
tropics, he dismissed that part
of it from his mind. It had
been full noon when he had
been caught in the storm, and
it could not be much more than

minutes past that now, so
swiftly had everything hap-
pened ; but the black, low
clouds, racing across the sky,
and the gusts of intermittent
rain, cut visibility down
around him.

He stood up on his small
island and leaned against the
wind that blew in and up the
river from the open gulf. On
three sides he saw nothing but
the fast-riding waves. On the
fourth, though, shading his
eyes against the occasional
bursts of rain, he discerned a
long, low, curving blackness
that would be one of the river
shores.

There lay safety. He esti-
mated its distance from him
at less than a hundred and
fifty yards. It was merely, he
told himself, a matter of
reaching it.

UNDER ordinary condi-
tions, he would have set-
tled down where he was and
waited for rescue. He was not
more than fifteen or twenty
miles from the Advance Base,
and in this storm they would
waste no time waiting for him
to come in, before starting out
to search for him. No sail-
plane could survive in such a
blow. Standing now, with the
wind pushing at him and the
rain stinging against his face
and hands, he found time for
a moment’s wry humor at his
own bad luck. On any civilized
world, such a storm would
have been charted and pre-

THE GOOD SEED

dieted, if not controlled entire-
ly. Well, the more fool he, for
venturing this far from Base.

It was in his favor that this
world of Mersey happened to
be so Earthlike that the dif-
ferences between the two plan-
ets were mostly unimportant.
Unfortunately, it was the one
unimportant difference that
made his present position on
the island a death trap. The
gulf into which his river emp-
tied was merely a twentieth
the area of the Gulf of Mexico
— but in this section it was
extremely shallow, having an
overall average depth of
around seventy-five feet.
When one of these fiash
storms formed suddenly out
over its waters, the wind
could either drain huge tidal
areas around the mouths of
the Adze, or else raise the
river level within hours a
matter of thirty feet.

With the onshore wind
whistling about his ears right
now, it was only too obvious
to Calvin that the river was
rising. This rocky little bit
sticking some twelve or fifteen
feet above the waves could
expect to be overwhelmed in
the next few hours.

He looked about him. The
island was bare except for a
few straggly bushes. He
reached out for a shoot from
a bush beside him. It came up
easily from the thin layer of
soil that overlaid the rocks,
and the wind snatched it out
of his hand. He saw it go skip-

ping over the tops of the
waves in the direction of the
shore, until a wave-slope
caught it and carried it into
the next trough and out of
sight. It at least, he thought,
would reach the safety of the
river bank. But it would take
a thousand such slender
stems, plaited into a raft, to
do him any good; and there
were not that many stems, and
not that much time.

Calvin turned and climbed
in toward the center high
point of the island. It was only
a few steps over the damp
soil and rocks, but when he
stood upright on a little crown
of rock and looked about him,
it seemed that the island was
smaller than ever, and might
be drowned at any second by
the wind-lashed waves. More-
over, there was nothing to be
seen which offered him any
more help or hope of escape.

Even then, he was not
moved to despair. He saw no
way out, but this simply rein-
forced his conviction that the
way out was hiding about him
somewhere, and he must look
that much harder for it.

He was going to step down
out of the full force of the
wind, when he happened to
notice a rounded object nest-
ling in a little hollow of the
rock below him, about a dozen
or so feet away.

He went and stood over
it, seeing that his first
guess as to its nature had

MARK MALLORY

been correct. It was one of the
intelligent traveling plants
that wandered around the
oceans of this world. It should
have been at home in this situ-
ation. Evidently, however, it
had made the mistake of com-
ing ashore here to seed. It was
now rooted in the soil of the
island, facing death as surely
as he^ if the wind or the weaves
tore it from its own helplessly
anchored roots.

“Can you understand me?”
he asked it.

There was an odd sort of
croaking from it, which seem-
ed to shape itself into words,
though the how of it remained
baffling to the ear. It was a
sort of supplemental telepathy
at work, over and above the
rough attempts to imitate hu-
man speech. Some of these in-
telligent plants they had got to
know in this area could com-
municate with them in this
fashion, though most could
not.

“I know you, man,” said the
plant. “I have seen your gath-
ering.” It was referring to the
Advance Base, which had at-
tracted a steady stream of the
plant visitors at first.

“Know any way to get
ashore?” Calvin asked.

“There is none,” said the
plant.

“I can’t see any, either.”

“There is none,” repeated
the plant.

“Eveiyone to his own opin-
ion,” said Calvin. Almost he
sneered a little. He turned his

gaze once more about the is-
land. “In my book, them that
won’t be beat can’t be beat.
That’s maybe where we’re dif-
ferent, plant.”

He left the plant and went
for a walk about the island. It
had been in his mind that pos-
sibly a drifting log or some
such could have been caught
by the island and he could use
this to get ashore. He found
nothing. For a few' minutes,
at one end of the island, he
stood fascinated, watching a
long sloping black rock with a
crack in it, reaching down in-
to the water. There was a
small tuft of moss growing in
the crack about five inches
above where the waves were
slapping. As he watched, the
waves slapped higher and
higher, until he turned away
abruptly, shivering, before he
could see the water actually
reach and cover the little
clump of green.

For the first time a realiza-
tion that he might not get off
the island touched him. It was
not yet fear, this realization,
but it reached deep into him
and he felt it, suddenly, like a
pressure against his heart. As
the moss was being covered,
so could he be covered, by the
far-reaching inexorable ad-
vance of the water.

And then this was wiped
away by an abrupt outburst
of anger and self-ridicule that
he — who had been through so
many dangers — should find
himself pinned by so common-

THE GOOD SEED

place a threat. A man, he told
himself, could die of drown-
ing anywhere. There was no
need to go light-years from
his place of birth to find such
a death. It made all dying —
and all living — seem small and
futile and insignificant, and
he did not like that feeling.

CALVIN went back to the
plant in its little hollow',
tight-hugging to the ground
and half-sheltered from the
wind, and looked down on its
dusky basketball-sized shape,
the tough hide swollen and
ready to burst with seeds.

“So you think there’s no
way out,” he said roughly.

“There is none,” said the
plant.

“Why don’t you just let
yourself go, if you think like
that?” Calvin said. “Why try
to keep down out of the wind,
if the waves’ll get you any-
w'ay, later?”

The plant did not answer
for a while.

“I do not want to die,” it
said then. “As long as I am
alive, there is the possibility
of some great improbable
chance saving me.”

“Oh,” said Calvin, and he
himself was silent in turn. “I
thought you’d given up.”

“I cannot give up,” said the
plant. “I am still alive. But I
know /there is no way to
safety.”

“You make a lot of sense.”
Calvin straightened up to
squint through the rain at the

dai'k and distant line of the
shore. “How much more time
would you say we had before
the water covers this rock?”
“The eighth part of a day-
light period, perhaps more,
perhaps less. The water can
rise either faster or more
slowly.”

“Any chance of it cresting
and going down?”

“That would be a great im-
probable chance such as that
of which I spoke,” said the
plant.

Calvin rotated slowly, sur-
veying the water around
them. Bits and pieces of flot-
sam were streaming by them
on their way before the wind,
now angling toward the near
bank. But none were close
enough or large enough to do
Calvin any good.

“Look,” said Calvin abrupt-
ly, “there’s a fisheries survey
station upriver here, not too
far. Now, I could dig up the
soil holding your roots. If I
did that, would you get to the
survey station as fast as you
could and tell them I’m
stranded here?”

“I would be glad to,” said
the plant. “But you cannot dig
me up. My roots have pene-
trated into the roclc. If you
tried to dig me up, they would
break off — and I would die
that much sooner.”

“You would, would you?”
grunted Calvin. But the ques-
tion was rhetorical. Already
his mind was busy searching
for some other way out. For

MARK MALLORY

the first time in his life, he felt
the touch of cold about his
heart. Could this be fear, he
wondered. But he had never
been afraid of death.

Crouching down again to be
out of the wind and rain, he
told himself that knowledge
still remained a tool he could
use. The plant must know
something that was, perhaps,
useless to it, but that could be
twisted to a human’s advan-
tage.

“What made you come to a
place like this to seed?” he
asked.

“Twenty nights and days
ago, when I first took root
here,” said the plant, “this
land was safe. The signs were
good for fair weather. And
this place was easy of access
from the water. I am not built
to travel far on land.”

“How would you manage in
a storm like this, if you were
not rooted down?”

“I would go with the wind
until I found shelter,” said the
plant. “The wind and waves
would not harm me then. They
hurt only whatever stands
firm and opposes them.”

“You can’t communicate
with others of your people
from here, can you?” asked
Calvin.

“There are none close,” said
the plant. “Anyway, what
could they do?”

‘“They could get a message
to the fisheries station, to get
help out here for us.”

“What help could help me?”

said the plant. “And in any
case they could not go against
the wind. They would have to
be upwind of the station, even
to help you.”

“We could tiy it.”

“We could try it,” agreed
the plant. “But first one of my
kind must come into speaking
range. We still hunt our great
improbable chance.”

There was a moment’s si-
lence between them in the
wind and rain. The river was
noisy, working against the
rock of the island.

“There must be something
that would give us a better
chance than just sitting here,”
said Calvin.

The plant did not answer.
“What are you thinking
about?” demanded Calvin.

“I am thinking of the irony
of our situation,” said the
plant. “You are free to wan-
der the water, but cannot. I
can wander the water, but I
am not free to do so. This is
death, and it is a strange
thing.”

“I don’t get you.”

“I only mean that it makes
no difference — that I am what
I am, or that you are what
you are. We could be any
things that would die when
the waves finally cover the is-
land.”

“Right enough,” said Calvin
impatiently. “What about it?”
“Nothing about it, man,”
said the plant. “I was only
thinking.”

THE GOOD SEED

“Don’t waste your time on
philosophy,” said Calvin
harshly. “Use some of that
brain power on a way to get
loose and get off.”

“Perhaps that and philoso-
phy are one and the same.”
“You’re not going to con-
vince me of that,” said Calvin,
getting up. “I’m going to take
another look around the is-
land.”

The island, as he walked
around its short margin,
showed itself to be definitely
smaller. He paused again by
the black rock. The moss was
lost now, under the water,
and the crack was all but un-
der as well. He stood shielding
his eyes against the wind-
driven rain, peering across at
the still visible shore. The
waves, he noted, were not ex-
treme-some four or five feet
in height — ^which meant that
the storm pi'oper was proba-
bly paralleling the land some
distance out in the gulf.

He clenched his fists in sud-
den frustration. If only he had
hung on to the sailplane — or
any decent-sized chunk of it!
At least going into the water
then would have been a gam-
ble with some faint chance of
success.

He had nowhere else to go,
after rounding the island. He
went back to the plant.

“Man,” said the plant, “one
of my people has been blown
to shelter a little down-
stream.”

Calvin straightened up ea-
gerly, turning to stare into the
wind.

“You cannot see him,” said
the plant. “He is caught be-
low the river bend and cannot
break loose against the force
of the wind. But he is close
enough to talk. And he sends
you good news.”

“Me?” Calvin hunkered
down beside the plant. “Good
news?”

“There is a large tree torn
loose from the bank and float-
ing this way. It should strike
the little bit of land where we
are here.”

“Strike it? Are you posi-
tive ?”

“There are the wind and the
water and the tree. They can
move only to one destination
— this island. Go quickly to
the windward point of the is-
land. The tree will be coming
shortly.”

Calvin jerked erect and
turned, wild triumph bursting
in him.

“Good-by, man,” said the
plant.

But he was already plung-
ing toward the downstream
end of the island. He reached
it and, shielding his eyes with
a hand, peer^ desperately
out over the water. The waves
hammered upon his boots as
he stood there, and then he
saw it, a mass of branches
upon which the wind was
blowing as on a sail, green
against black, coming toward
him.

MARK MALLORY

He crouched, wrung
with impatience, as the
tree drifted swiftly through
the water toward him, too
ponderous to rise and fall
more than a little with the
waves and presenting a gal-
leonlike appearance of mass
and invincibility. As it came
closer, a fear that it would, in
spite of the plant’s assurances,
miss the island, crept into his
heart and chilled it.

It seemed to Calvin that it
was veering — that it would
pass to windwaz’d of the is-
land, between him and the
dimly seen shore. The thought
of losing it was more than he
could bear to consider; and
with a sudden burst of panic,
he threw himself into the
waves, beating clumsily and
frantically for it.

The river took him into its
massive fury. He had forgot-
ten the strength of it. His first
dive took him under an incom-
ing wave, and he emerged,
gasping, into the trough be-
hind, with water exploding in
his face. He kicked and threw
his arms about, but the slow
and futile-seeming beatings
of his limbs appeared helpless
as the fluttering of a butterfly
in a collector’s net. He choked
for air, and, rising on the
crest of one wave, found him-
self turned backward to face
the island, and being swept
past it.

Fear came home to him
then. He lashed out, fighting
only for the solid ground of

the island and his life. His
world became a place of foam
and fury. He strained for air.
He dug for the island. And
then, suddenly, he felt him-
self flung upon hard rock and
gasping, crawling, he emerged
onto safety.

He hung there on hands and
knees, battered and panting.
Then the i*emembrance of the
tree cut like a knife to the
core of his fear-soaked being.
He staggered up, and, looking
about, saw that he was almost
to the far end of the island.
He turned. Above him, at the
windward point, the tree it-
self was just now grounding,
branches first, and swinging
about as the long trunk,
caught by the waves, pulled it
around and onward.

With an inarticulate cry, he
ran toward it. But the mass of
water against the heavy tree
trunk was already pulling the
branches from their tanglings
with the rock. It floated free.
Taking the wind once more in
its sail of leaves, it moved
slowly — and then more swiftly
on past the far side of the
island.

He sci'ambled up his side of
the island’s crest. But when he
reached its top and could see
the tree again, it was already
moving past and out from the
island, too swiftly for him to
catch it, even if he had been
the swimmer he had just
proved himself not to be.

He dropped on his knees,
there on the island’s rocky

THE GOOD SEED

spine, and watched it fade in
the grayness of the rain, un-
til the green of its branches
was lost in a grayish blob, and
this in the general welter of
storm and waves. And sudden-
ly a dark horror of death
closed over him, blotting out
all the scene.

A VOICE roused him. “That
is too bad,’' said the
plant.

He turned his head numbly.
He was kneeling less than half
a dozen feet from the little
hollow where the plant still
sheltered. He looked at it now,
dazed, as if he could not re-
member what it was, nor how
it came to talk to him. Then
his eyes cleared a little of their
shock and he crept over to it
on hands and knees and
crouched in the shelter of the
hollow.

“The water is rising more
swiftly,” said the plant. “It
will be not long now.”

“No!” said Calvin. The
word was lost in the sound of
the waves and wind, as though
it had never been. Nor, the
minute it was spoken, could he
remember what he had meant
to deny by it. It had been only
a response without thought,
an instinctive negation.

“You make me wonder,”
said the plant, after a little,
“why it hurts you so — this
thought of dying. Since you
first became alive, you have
faced ultimate death. And you
have not faced it alone. All

things die. This storm must
die. This rock on which we lie
will not exist forever. Even
worlds and suns come at last
to their ends, and galaxies,
perhaps even the Universe.”
Calvin shook his head. He
did not answer.

“You are a fighting people,”
said the plant, almost as if to
itself. “Well and good. Per-
haps a life like mine, yielding,
giving to the forces of nature,
traveling before the wind,
sees less than you see, of a
reason for clawing hold on
existence. But still it seems
to me that even a fighter
would be glad at last to quit
the struggle, when there is no
other choice.”

“Not here,” said Calvin
thickly. “Not now.”

“Why not here, why not
now,” said the plant, “when
it has to be somewhere and
sometime?”

Calvin did not answer.

“I feel sorry for you,” said
the plant. “I do not like to see
things suffer.”

Raising his head a little and
looking around him, Calvin
could see the water, risen high
around them, so that waves
were splashing on all sides,
less than the length of his own
body away.

“It wouldn’t make sense to
you,” said Calvin then, rais-
ing his rain^wet face toward
the plant. “You’re old by your
standards. I’m young. I’ve got
things to do. You don’t under-
stand.”

MARK MALLORY

“No,” the plant agreed. “I
do not understand.”

CALVIN crawled a little
closer to the plant, into
the hollow, until he could see
the vibrating air-sac that pro-
duced the voice of the plant.
“Don’t you see? I’ve got to do
something — I’ve got to feel
I’ve accomplished something
— before I quit.”

“What something?” asked
the plant.

“I don’t know]” cried Cal-
vin. “I just know I haven’t I
I feel thrown away!”

“What is living? It is feel-
ing and thinking. It is seeding
and ti'ying to understand. It is
companionship of your own
people. What more is there?”
“You have to do some-
thing.” .

“Do what?”

“Something important.
Something to feel satisfied
about.” A wave, higher than
the rest, slapped the rock a
bare couple of feet below them
and sent spray stinging in
against them. “You have to
say, ‘Look, maybe it wasn’t
much, but I did this.’ ”

“What kind of this?”

“How do I know?” shouted
Calvin. “Something — maybe
something nobody else did —
maybe something that hasn’t
been done before!”

“For yourself?” said the
plant. A higher wave slapped
at the veiy rim of their hol-
low, and a little water ran
over and down to pool around

them. Calvin felt it cold
around his knees and wrists.
“Or for the doing?”

“For the doing! For the
doing!”

“If it is for the doing, can
you take no comfort from the
fact there are others of your
own kind to do it?”

Another wave came in on
them. Calvin moved spasmodi-
cally right up against the
plant and put his arms around
it, holding on.

“I have seeded ten times
and done much thinking,” said
the plant — rather muffledly,
for Calvin’s body was pressing
against its air-sac. “I have not
thought of anything really
new, or startling, or great, but
1 am satisfied.” It paused a
moment as a new wave
drenched them and receded.
They were half awash in the
hollow now, and the waves
came regularly. “I do not see
how this is so different from
what you have done. But I am
content.” Another and strong-
er wave rocked them. The
plant made a sound that might
have been of pain at its roots
tearing. “Have you seeded?”

“No,” said Calvin, and all
at once, like light breaking at
last into the dark cave of his
being, in this twelfth hour, it
came to him — all of what he
had robbed himself in his
search for a victory. Choking
on a wave, he clung to the
plant with frenzied strength.
“Nothing!” The word came
tom from him as if by some

THE GOOD SEED

ruthless hand. "‘Fve got noth-
ing!”

'Then I understand at last,”
said the plant. “For of all
things, the most terrible is to
die unfruitful. It is no good to
say we will not be beaten, be-
cause there is always waiting,
somewhere, that which can
t)eat us. And then a life that
is seedless goes down to de-
feat finally and forever. But
when one has seeded, there is
no ending of the battle^ and
life mounts on life until the
light is reached by those far
generations in which we have
had our own small but neces-
sary part. Then our personal
defeat has been nothing, for
though we died, we are still
living, and though we fell, we
conquered.”

But Calvin, clinging to the
plant with both arms, saw on-
ly the water closing over him.

“Too late — ” he choked.
“Too late— too late—”

“No,” bubbled the plant.
“Not too late yet. This
changes things. For I have
seeded ten times and passed
on my life. But you — I did not
understand. I did not realize
your need.”

The flood, cresting, ran
clear and strong, the
waves breaking heavily on the
drowned shore by the river
mouth. The rescue spinner,
two hours out of Base and de-
scending once again through
the fleeting murk, checked at
the sight of a begrimed human

figure, staggering along the
slick margin of the shore, car-
rying something large and
limp under one arm, and with
the other arm poking at the
ground with a stick.

The spinner came down al-
most on top of him, and the
two men in it reached to catch
Calvin. He could hardly stand,
let alone stumble forward, but
stumble he did.

“Cal!” said the pilot. “Hold
up! IFs us.”

“Let go,” said Calvin thick-
ly. He pulled loose, dug with
his stick, dropped something
from the limp thing into the
hole he had made, and moved
on.

“You out of your head.
Cal?” cried the co-pilot.
“Come on, weVe got to get you
back to the hospital.”

“No,” said Calvin, pulling
away again.

“What’re you doing?” de-
manded the pilot. “WhaFve
you got there?”

“Think-plant. Dead,” said
Calvin, continuing his work.
''Let go!” He fought weakl>%
but so fiercely that they did
turn him loose again. “You
don’t understand. Saved my
life.”

“Saved your life?” The pilot
followed him. “How?”

“1 was on an island. In the
river. Flood coming up.” Cal-
vin dug a fresh hole in the
ground. “It could have lived a
little longer. It let me pull it
ahead of time — so Fd have
something to float to shore

MARK MALLORY

on.” He turned exhaustion-
bleared eyes on them. Saved
my life.”

The pilot and the co-pilot
looked at each other as two
men look at each other over
the head of a child, or a mad-
man.

'‘All right, Cal,” said the
pilot. "So it saved your life.
But how come you’ve got to do

this? And what are you doing,
anyhow?”

"What am I doing?” Calvin
paused entirely and turned to
face them. "What am I do-
ing?” he repeated on a rising
note of wonder. "Why, you
damn fools, Tm doing the first
real thing I ever did in my
life! I’m saving the lives of
these seeds!” END

Charting Our Genes

In a combined assault on ‘^linkage studies” for *^the location of genes for
such things as eye color, blood groups and specific hereditary diseases,”
Johns Hopkins University researchers and computer men are engaged in
what may be the final probe into the mystery of heredity.

Using inherited disease as a marker, it can be determined which genes
travel together; the computers are set to work figuring out the odds of
two hereditary traits being contained in the same chromosome, and then
the genetic makeup of all members of the family in regard to the
hereditary disease.

The same method can be used with eye color, blood groups, and even
such odd inherited traits as the ability to taste certain chemicals.

Prof. S. A. Talbot, spokesman for the research group, cited ellip-
tocytosis, a rare dominant characteristic in which the red blood cell has
an elliptical shape, as an aid in computing the location of genes. There
are about a dozen marker traits known to exist in Man of that clearly
determinable a nature, and with the use of computers, scientists should
be able to assign a linkage group to one in five of these traits.

The major difficulty is collecting five-generation families. This is no
problem with test animals and insects, but it is with hum.an beings. Prof.
Talbot suggests an international linkage-analysis center where docu-
mented data can be assembled and studied.

The genetic prevention of certain hereditary diseases is one obvious
benefit, and it is readily within grasp.

Farther off is the complete charting of the chromosome for the preven-
tion of all inherited disease — but not as far off as one vrould imagine, for
progress is being made at a truly fantastic rate compared with the rela-
tively slow development in other branches of medicine until now. Ulti-
mately? Mating for desired traits has long been done in animal hus-
bandry, and is an overworke<l theme in science fiction, where govern-
mental decree is taken for granted — but need theie be force? There isn^t
for marriage.

the

Divers

By JAMES STAMERS

*Xhe key to Fred’s success was

simple he may not have

had much of a mind, hut it

was all his, nobody else’sl

He had forgotten the beer
again. He remembered
that he had forgotten only as
he opened the apaiianent door.
A wave of smoke and onions
and hamburger flowed past
him into the dingy corridor
and he stumbled on the gar-
bage pail, plunked right in the
doorway for him to lug along
the passage to the chute. The
bed was not made in one of
their two rooms and newspa-
pers littered the other. Elsie
was in the kitchen.

“Fred! Fred, did you re-
member my beer?”

He closed the door so that
the neighbors would not hear
the row to come, except
through the walls.

‘‘Didja, Fred?”

She stood akimbo in the
kitchen doorway, a cigarette
hanging from her lips, her
dressing gown loose and spot-
ted, her feet in old scuffs.

‘‘I forgot,” he mumbled,
‘‘ril go now.”

Oh, no, he wouldn't. Not
until he had heard a full re-
sume of his lack of character,
lack of enterprise, ambition,
decency, thoughtfulness, man-
hood, semblance of virtue.

“I said I was going, Elsie.
1 said I was going, didn't I?”
“Well, my day ! You remem-
bered my name !”

It was true he rarely used
her name or called her any
husbandly term such as dear
or darling instead, and rarely
looked at her at all if he could
avoid it inconspicuously. Ten
years of marriage — ten years
of legal proximity, rather, for
nothing in him was married to
anything in her any more.

“I don't know why you mar-
ried me,” he said.

“Makes you wonder, doesn't
it? Go on, get out.”

He almost knocked the
man over as he left the
apartment. The man was
standing there, about to ring
the bell. Well dressed, clean,
expensive overcoat, polished
shoes, black hat and a mild
friendly face.

“Mr. Frederick Williams?^
the man asked.

“Yes,” said Fred.

“You entered the Sunday
News competition for a free
space ride?”

“Yes. Did I win it?”
“Unfortunately, no,” said
the man.

“Oh. Well, excuse me, Tve
got to go and get something.”
“I'll come with you. My
name is Howard Sprinnell,
Mr. Williams, and Tve been
examining the entries to that
competition. Frankly, we
think you have considerable
talent.”

“Mister,” said Fred over
his shoulder as they went
down the stairs, “if you're
trying to sell me something — ”
“I don't want a penny from
you, Mr. Williams.”

“Then what — ”

“We would merely appreci-
ate a few hours of your time,
at your convenience.”

“A few hours?” Fred said,
distressed. By working double
shift in the automation-parts
supply house, he could just
keep going, financially and
physically. The question of
mental fatigue was exclusive-
ly Elsie's province and there
he had a rough working
technique for responding
without really listening. His
job called for no mental effort
greater than reading a ship-
ping list, and his home life
certainly didn't. Most of the
time he had nothing in his
mind at all; the days passed

JAMES STAMERS

faster that way. But Elsie and
the job kept him tired. Odd
how just not listening wrung
you out and drained you off.

“We are, of course, very
glad to offer you compensation
for your time, Mr. Williams,”
said the man.

Elsie would just drink it
away. He'd have to haul crates
of bourbon instead of cans of
beer, that's all.

“Not interested,” he said.

That was it. That was the
way to keep a salesman stall-
ed. Just “not interested.”
Keep saying it and nothing
else. They all said they were
not salesmen and weren't sell-
ing anything. Every salesman
he had ever met at the door
said that. Galactic Encyclope-
dia, Nuclear Brush, Your
Venus Vacation, video sub-
scriptions, even the Federal
numbei's game, they all start-
ed out by offering you a spe-
cial opportunity and were not
selling you anything. The man
was still talking.

“Not interested,'’ Fred said.

“Fred,” said the man as
they reached the bottom of the
stairs, “I'm doing you a favor.
I'm not supposed to tell you
this, but either you come vol-
untarily or you'll come any-
way. Why not get paid for it?”

“Not interested. And if any-
one wants me, they can come
and get me. I don't care. I just
don't care.”

He slouched off into the rain
toward the supermarket.

As Dr. Howard Sprinnell

watched him go he took a
small silver case from his top-
coat pocket. He raised the
case to his lips and said quiet-
ly: “Sprinnell here. No. A
clear case, but no. Pick him
up.”

The squad car arrived si-
lently on its jets as Fred
Williams reached the door of
the apartment house. He was
carrying a pack of beer in
each hand and was glad to see
the man had gone. That's all
you had to do — just keep say-
ing “not interested” until they
went away.

“O.K., bud.”

The troopers took him on
both sides, grasped his arms,
and levered him round.

“Hey!” Fred protested.
“The beer's for my wife. She's
waiting for it. Please, fellers,
I'll never hear the end of it if
she doesn't get her beer.”
“Joe,” said the trooper on
Fred's right, jerking his head
in the direction of the door be-
hind them.

A third trooper climbed out
of the squad car, took the
packs from Fred's hands and
walked into the apartment
house. He climbed the stairs
swiftly, wrinkling his nose at
the stale thickness of the air,
knocked on the apartment door
and waited for Elsie to open
it.

“Here's your beer,” he said
shortly.

“Where's Fred?”

“Your husband is being de-

THE DIVERS

tained in connection with a
robbery at his office/'

"‘Fred! Are you kidding?
Fred hasn't the sense or the
guts ! How long will he be
gone?"

“Two or three weeks."

“Oh," said Elsie, scratching
herself disinterestedly. “Well,
thanks for the beer."

She shut the door and the
trooper returned to the squad
car. He looked at Fred sym-
pathetically but said nothing.
The squad car took off, then
turned on its sirens.

‘‘What's this all about?"
asked Fred Williams from the
back seat.

“Just excitement, bud. We
live a dull life."

You think you do, you
should live mine. I don't care
anyway. If I ask them what
I'm doing in this squad car.
I'll get a silly answer.

“A guy called Spinner or
something send for you?"

“We don't get sent for, bud.
Where have you been, the
Middle Ages?"

He had a point there. Se-
curity troopers were un-
der direct control of the
President and came and went
as they pleased. The satellite
stations gave them general di-
rectives and the President
directed the stations. Fred
Williams grinned at the
thought of Spinner, or what-
ever his name was, calling the
President to call a satellite
station to call these cops to

come and get him. He would
have been shocked and fright-
ened if anyone had told him
this was almost exactly what
had happened.

They shot into the garage
of an ordinary Federal police
station, a large tiled vault
smelling of hoses, soap and
water. The troopers took him
upstairs, along wax-polished
corridors, through swinging
doors and out of the muttered
voices, footsteps, paper rat-
tling and telephone tinkle of
the station, into the smooth
silence of a surgery. That fel-
low Spinner was waiting in a
white doctor's coat.

“They pick you up too?"
Fred Williams said.

The Security troopers hoist-
ed him into a dentist's chair,
saluted the other man and
went away.

“You can leave any time
you wish, Fred. If you do,
though. I'll have you brought
back. I'm Dr. Howard Sprin-
nell."

“Funny, I thought your
name was Cloud Spinner or
something," Fred confessed.

“That's veiy interesting."
The doctor leaned forward
across his desk. “What made
you think that?"

“I just remembered it that
way, that's all."

“Ah. You have an unusual
mind, Fred. No, I mean it.
And just to show you this is
not fooling, I have a call here
for you from the President."

“From Jake?"

JAMES STAMERS

“From President Jackson,
yes.”

Dr. SPRINNELL pressed a
a green button on the
video control on his desk.
The wall panel lit and Presi-
dent Jackson’s familiar face
looked at Fred Williams.

“Mr. Williams,” said the
President. “The nation has
called you to an unusual task.
On your complete cooperation
and absolute discretion in not
mentioning to anyone — to any-
one at all — what you may now
learn depend matters of the
utmost consequence to us all.
I wish you good luck and God-
speed.”

The panel went dark and
the doctor switched off.

“That was Jake himself,”
Fred Williams said. “Talking
to me.”

Like the many thousand
million in the System, Fred
referred to the President fa-
miliarly as Jake, but he never
thought he would get to talk
to him, or be talked to person-
ally.

“What did he want to talk
to me for?” Fred asked, dazed.

“That’s what I want to
show you,” said Dr. Sprinnell.
“You understood what the
President said about keeping
this entirely confidential?”
“Hell, no one would believe
it if I said I’d been talking to
the President, anyway.”
“That’s what we figure,”
said the doctor, smiling slight-
ly. He picked up a pack of

cards and flipped five of them
onto the desk, a circle, a cross,
two wavy lines, a rectangle
and a star. “These are Zener
cards, Fred. Ever see them
before?”

No, but they didn’t look like
much. This was cockeyed, the
whole situation — having the
President call him so that he
and a quack could play cards.

“It will be clearer in a little
while,” Dr. Howard Sprinnell
said. “But first we must run
this little check. Please point
to one of these cards every
minute when I say ‘now.’ ”

Fred shifted himself in the
high chair and pointed to one
of the five cards obediently
every minute. After twenty
minutes, the doctor increased
the rate. He noted every selec-
tion.

“Last lap now, Fred.”

He was sick of this, but it
was better than sitting in the
apartment with Elsie. Fred
pointed to a card for the last
time.

“And now,” the doctor said,
standing up and feeding his
notations into a machine in
the corner of the room, “we
have here the results.”

He pulled a tape from the
machine as it purred out, and
showed it to Fred. It was a
score of some sort.

“In another room,” Dr.
Howard Sprinnell explained,
“we have a synchronized tele-
path trying to influence your
selections of these cards. If
you have psi qualities, Fred,

THE DIVERS

these results will show how
high they are. If you have
none, then your chances of
picking the right card are one
in five. That goes for picking
the card ahead of the right
one, or behind it, or two ahead
and so on. In other words, if
the cards had been selected
here by a machine instead of
you, we would expect twenty
per cent of the answers to be
right, by sheer chance — or
statistical probability, to put
it more accurately.”

“So how did I do? Am I a
mind-reader? That would
make me laugh.”

The doctor glanced at the
result tape he was hold-
ing.

“You have the results we
want,” he said. “Otherwise I
would not tell you this. You
would be thanked, given a re-
ward, made a fuss of by some
civil servant of prominence
and sent home in style.”

He looked up at Fred in the
dentist’s chair.

“Do you remember that
contest in the Sunday NeivsV’
Fred Williams remembered
it. Every week there had been
a puzzle picture to identify.
The contest had lasted nearly
a year. He remembered par-
ticularly that each week there
had been a cut of the room in
which entries were to be
judged, a large editorial office,
just above the puzzle picture.
Just a room. He had wondered
why they bothered to put it in.

“There was a picture of a
room in the paper,” said the
doctor, “where each week,
without any possibility of
fraud or anyone seeing it ex-
cept the judges, the solution
to the puzzle was hung up on
the wall in the middle of the
picture shovm in the paper.
The puzzles themselves were
meaningless. We w'anted to
see how many people wrote
in the right solution just from
seeing the picture of the emp-
ty room. The right solution,
of course, was the one hanging
in that room at that time,
which no one could see, and
which was selected an hour
before publication of the pa-
per each week by random se-
lection in a dictionaiy.”

“So what did I get, a con-
solation prize?” asked Fred.

“In a way,” the doctor
smiled. “But not for coming
near winning. The top twenty
winners were highly gifted
people we recruited into the
Psi faculties of Duke, Har-
vard, Oxford, Paris and else-
where. They scored consistent-
ly throughout the year with a
better than probability devia-
tion.”

“Huh?”

“They got a lot more right
than they could by chance
alone. But your results Avere
even more interesting to us.
You got the same result here,
just now, on the Zener cards.”
“I’m still in the running?”
“Fred, quite seriously, you
are the best candidate we’ve

JAMES STAMERS

ever met. Hence the special
treatment. In the history of
the System Government, there
have only been ten other peo-
ple with results similar to
yours.”

“Is that so? Well, I suppose
you know what you're doing,
Doc. But I never had a pre-
monition in my life.”

Doctor Howard Sprinnell
frowned. “I should hope not.
Almost everyone has some psi
capacities, but w'e're not inter-
ested in minor phenomena.
This is a government depart-
ment, Fred. Here a thing has
to work all the time, whenever
it's needed, wherever it’s need-
ed. A faculty professor has.
off-days when he couldn't roll
a die against chance. But you
can't.”

“Look, doc. I think you’ve
got the wrong man. I'm Fred
Williams. Frederick L. Wil-
liams. Are you sure — ”

“Look yourself,” interrupt-
ed the doctor, leaning over to
wave the tape under Fred’s
nose. Chance would give you
twenty per cent right — one
out of five. Look at your re-
sult.”

Fred took the tape and
studied it. “You’ve read it
wrong. This says several mil-
lion per cent.”

“It says z67'o per cent. NiL
Not one answer right, Fred.
The millions are the probabil-
ities of that deviation ... oh,
never mind. See the big black
zero?”

“Yes, Doc.”

“That is your result. It’s
statistically almost impossi-
ble, but you've done it. You
did it with the puzste in the
competition. You did not get
one single, solitary answer
right. Not one! Even a ma-
chine gets one out of five
right, Fred. Don't you see?”
No, he didn’t, and it seemed
to be just what Elsie was al-
ways complaining about. He
lacked this and lacked that.
And now he couldn’t even do
what a machine did.

“Okay, Doc,” Fred said
tiredly. “So I'm dumber than
a machine. That figures.”

“If you talk like that, you
are,” snapped Doctor Howard
Sprinell. “You have the high-
est negative Psi rating in the
Solar System. No clairvoy-
ance, no telepathy, no induced
hallucinations, no precogni-
tions, no telekinesis, no psi-
screens, no interference of any
kind. When we send you out
into — well, never mind, Fred.
The main point at present is
that you are a very, very rare
observer.”

“That’s fine,” Fred said.
“Look, Doc, I feel beat.”
“You’re meant to. Hell,
man. I’ve been tiring you for
two hours now. And what’s
more. I'll give you a little
warning in advance. We aren’t
going to let you eat for three
days either. You’re going to
be so tired that your body is
going to loosen its grip. Don’t
worry, you won’t die. Ten peo-
ple have done this before you

THE DIVERS

and they’re all right. You’ll
meet them all soon. Now just
hold still.”

Dr. Howard Sprinnell slip-
ped a hypo needle swiftly into
Fred’s neck, withdrew it and
dabbed with a piece of surgi-
cal wool.

“Off you go, Fred.”

He was breaking into
pieces, but he didn’t care.
He slept and woke and slept
and woke in the chair in old
Cloud Spinner’s office and now
he was coming apart and he
just did not care. Fred Wil-
liams had had several years
of simple apathy. It came nat-
urally to him. His body rested,
tired and inert, lacking in
vigor from lack of food, and
his mind separated slowly
from it, like a man standing
up in a pool of pygmies. His
heart, hands, liver, stomach,
viscera had their pygmy
minds all bundled in with his,
and now falling away in sepa-
ration as he rose from them.

His mind rose away from
his body in the chair alto-
gether. He viewed his body
with unconcern, and the chair
in which it sat, and the room,
and through the walls the sur-
rounding offices, and the
rooms of the Federal police
station, where the Security
trooper named Joe who had
taken the beer sat picking his
teeth and gabbing with a pair
of young Federal cops, and the
roof of the block in which the
station stood.

His mind went up like a
balloon, rising swiftly into the
atmosphere, and the city
shrank away under him like
a toy plan, a kid’s aid to Bet-
ter Civics, Home Town box
VI, no Solar Credits neces-
sary. He shifted automatically
away from the main airport,
but a moment later he went
clean through an airliner
cockpit, cabins with passen-
gers, exhaust, and out exactly
where he was before. His
mind followed the airliner in-
voluntarily, until he asked
himself why, and immediately
continued rising into the sky,
looking down at the ground
and the great spherical hori-
zon.

His mind rose into cloud
and examined minutely a wa-
ter molecule floating from a
piece of dust as big as a rock.
His sense of proportion sent
him shooting out of the top of
the cloud suddenly, like a star-
tled fish. The ground became
a globe gradually, and as the
clouds below became little
wisps over the light blue haze
of the Earth, his feeling of
liberation increased and he
rose faster. He went through
layer after layer of radiation
sparking fitfully around him,
and fiercer belts. And then the
dust thinned out like scattered
transparent ball bearings, and
his mind approached the sat-
ellite stations riding over the
Earth. He was tempted to go
through one, but it seemed un-
important and he rose out.

JAMES STAMERS

The Moon was swinging
down away from him, a vast
pitted ball bigger to his mind
than the Earth now. He put on
more speed, so that his mind
flashed away from the Sun.
Then as he paused an odd
thing happened. One moment
he was up there, alone above
the small Earth and its small-
er Moon, and the next instant
his mind had flashed right into
the center of the Sun, deep in
the inferno of its core, where
violence and variegated light
surrounded him. And then he
was out again, and his mind
zoomed off as if he were sit-
ting in the front seat of a low-
slung car with the landmarks
coming at a rush toward him
and away to the side. The
Galaxy fell away behind his
mind in this fashion and the
Great Nebula of Andromeda
passed by.

His mind roamed for a
while among the other galactic
clusters and the spiral gal-
axies. He found his mind
could appear at any point he
wished, without the long rush
through space. He could trans-
fer instantaneously from place
to place, and he hopped in this
way at random from Crab to
Lagoon and in to Polaris and
out to the Great Spiral of
Ursa Major, and onward to
the open centers of the uni-
verse.

In deeper space, where end-
less banks of galaxies roller-
coasted away from each other,
he felt a change of quality

THE DIVERS

come over his mind. It turned
within itself where all the
vivid stars became mere float-
ing lights on the surface of a
bubble outside. Here, within
his mind, was deeper space
and yet another liberation.
His mind hung like a grape
about to empty into a vat,
which in this larger sense was
truly himself. Insofar as he,
Fi-ed Williams, was a mind, it
was only a skin around the
greater liquid, in which indeed
he perceived all things held
in common.

He was about to throw off
the skin and mingle in this
condition where he and the
Magellanic Clouds and Joe the
Security trooper’s toothpick
had a single existence, when
he was back in the chair in the
office.

His body settled over him
again. He felt compressed and
imprisoned and robbed. His
head turned as if it were o*n
antiquated pulleys and his
arms and shoulders were
strung together awkwardly.

“It’s bad to be back, isn’t it?
You’ll never get used to that.
But that was one hell of a
Dive.”

Fred williams looked at

the other people in the of-
fice. There were ten of them
and Dr. Howard Sprinnell.
Three were women, and all
except the doctor had large
eyes.

That was what you noticed
about them, their enormous

gentle eyes and their slightly
thin faces. The doctor held a
mirror up for him to see his
own face, and it was much the
same.

“They thought we had lost
you there for a while,” said
the doctor. “All Divers do that
on their first trip out — but
you. I’m told, almost joined
the Lord.”

“Is that what This is?”

“It’s a matter outside our
field,” said Dr. Howard Sprin-
nell carefully, “and a matter
of choice as to name. But mys-
tical evidence seems to point
that way.”

One of the girls laughed.
“You’re embarrassing the So-
lar Government, Fred. They
are not supposed to have any
sectarian views. But that’s
what we Divers think the
This is. My name’s Milly. 'This
is Pat, and Joan, Bill, Ed, Al,
John, Anthony, Ricardo and
Mitch. Welcome to the Divers,
Fred.”

Fred Williams smiled
around. The women were at-
tractive, all brown-haired and
nicely shaped. The seven men
were just regular guys you
might meet anywhere. But
then, he wasn’t anything to
win a prize himself.

“So far as we are concern-
ed, Fred,” Dr. Howard Sprin-
nell said, “and this is official,
there is the normal conscious
mind, the subliminal mind of
which we are not usually con-
scious but which is apparently
a parcel of regional physical

minds and the mind you roam
in, and there is the uncon-
scious mind, which does not
seem to belong to any one pez’-
son, although everyone has it,
and which you people embar-
rass me by referring to as the
This.

“All we know, officially, is
that the This is the natural or
original home of the universe,
and the only reason we know
that is because we don’t want
Divers to disappear into it and
not come out. You’re all too
rare. I gather it is almost un-
bearable to come out of. But
you’ll just have to avoid the
temptation to go home, as it
were. After all, it has taken
several million years to get
man out here where he is and
what he is. And the second
reason is that the entire Solar
Government depends on the
people in this room for infor-
mation.”

Fred Williams looked at the
others. They were serious.
The smallest of the girls, Pat,
caught him looking and
smiled.

She turned to the doctor.
“Can I tell Fred?”

“You followed him, so you
may as well. 7 don’t know
what you Divers feel. But the
Defense Council is waiting
for the rest of you and we
must hurry along.”

Dr. Howard Sprinnell pat-
ted Fred on the shoulder as he
passed. He stood aside for the
other Divers to leave the
room, nodded to Pat and Fred,

JAMES STAMERS

and shut the door behind him.

Fred Williams levered his
body off the dentist’s chair
and stood unsteadily. The girl
took his arm. She was smaller
than he, the top of her head
reaching to his mouth, small,
delicate and scented with
heather.

“There’s a lounge next door
— you may not have noticed it
on the way out — and there’s
always a bowl of fruit and
some cheese and biscuits
there. Let’s go in.”

He followed her.

Even the short walk helped
accustom himself to his body
again. And the room was large
and airy, overlooking the cen-
tral park of the city and the
clouds beyond the tall build-
ings in the distance.

He stood looking out at the
view and eating an apple
while she sliced cheese and
laid the pieces on a plate with
some biscuits for him. Then
she sat down, folded her hands
in her lap and looked at him.
She was wearing a white-and-
blue-check dress. She looked
young and fresh and alive.
The room was clean and fresh.
He could not think of Elsie
and that apartment as being
in the same world.

“Did the doc say you fol-
lowed me?” Fred asked even-
tually.

“One of us always goes with
a new Diver on the first trip.”

“What did I look like? I
mean was there anything to
see?”

“Oh, yes.” Pat laughed. "As
a matter of fact, our minds
look like the inside of eggs out
there.”

“But a plane went through
me. And I shot for some rea-
son into the Sun.”

He turned and looked

disbelievingly up into the

sky.

The Sun made him blink
and his eyes watered.

“Now I can’t even look at
it,” he said, “any more than
I could before.”

“Show me your mind,” she
said simply. “Where is it?”
“Well . . .”

“That’s the whole point of
the Divers. A mind is not in
space-time. It is connected
with a body which is — or, to
be exact, it is associated with
— a physical brain, which in
turn can work a mouth and
hands to communicate what
the mind has seen. The Solar
Government has the problem
in reverse. They can send ships
through hyper-space ; other-
wise, as you know, we could
never have populated the Gal-
axy. Why, Polaris, which you
visited, is over a thousand
light-years from Earth! They
can make matter shift in and
out of hyper-space. But they
can’t communicate that far
away. Radiation won’t take
the shift. So the government
can either send radio waves
out and wait a couple of thou-
sand years for the answer, or
it has to shuttle whole ships

THE DIVERS

to and fro just to get a simple
message.

“Worse, from a defense
viewpoint, there are times
when they must have informa-
tion fast and when the nature
of the news means that no
ship will be either available
or allowed to become available
to carry the news. Suppose
you are an intelligent life-
form off Canopus and you
think up a magnificent way of
taking over the Solar System.
You’re six hundred and fifty
light-years away, but time is
no problem because either you
live longer than that or you
have a tribe-culture. Even if
the system had a billion police
ships, which it hasn't, it could
never be sure of catching
Canopus preparing, or inter-
cepting whatever horror they
sent oft. And even if it were
lucky, the ship would have to
come back itself to get the
news to the Solar Govern-
ment.

“A Diver can send his mind
instantaneously from one end
of the universe to the other,
he can examine atomic parti-
cles or survey galaxies, he can
see through matter as if it
were full of holes — which it is
— he can patrol sectors and
report exactly what he found
there. He can dive into deep
space and be free.”

“Yes,” Fred Williams said.
“That’s it. Free. That’s exact-
ly how we feel, isn’t it?”

“Never mind. You’ll be go-
ing out again. Regularly. With

me at first until you get pa-
troling under control. And
then on your own.”

“Are we always hungry?”
asked Fred Williams, taking
another apple.

“It helps. The government
would like us to be permanent-
ly at the point of death, but
that is fortunately impracti-
cal. The less hold our bodies
have, the easier it is to go out.
There’s one other point,
though. And since you’re com-
ing with me on your training.
I’d prefer you to know — no
matter what the rules say.
Whenever you go near another
living being in a Dive, your
mind can see the other mind,
and you can read it from the
pictures in it. It’s difficult to
describe, but you’ll see for
yourself. And if the mind you
are looking at is connected up
to a body, as we are now, and
if the pictures don’t seem to
fit the situation, you can take
it that they refer to events
still in the future as far as
that body is concerned. The
mind has a different space-
time existence from the body,
obviously, and quite often it
is ahead in time. That’s why
we have to be negative Psi.
Anyone can Dive, but only a
negative Psi can remain ob-
jective about other beings’
minds. A Psi would collect
other minds’ contents and get
them confused with his own —
future and present all messed
up, full of symbols — take a
look at a Psi’s mind sometime

JAMES STAMERS

on the way back. There are a
lot of accidental roamers
around on Earth.''

‘‘If we can read other
minds," Fred Williams said
thoughtfully, “then we Divers
could have a hell of a lot of
power."

He was surprised when Pat
laughed.

“We all think of that," she
said, “but so did the Solar
Government. We have a bunch
of Psis and Security troops
tracing us all the time when
we're in the body. But the real
hold on us is not that. How
would you feel if you were
told you could never Dive
again?"

“I — I wouldn't like that."

“You see? And you've only
been on the first experimental
Dive. Imagine when it is your
whole life."

Fred Williams nodded slow-
ly.

Then he asked: “Where do
you live?"

“Oh, no. Divers never mix.
Our existence is a top-secret.
And the risk of losing two
Divers in a single accident
would keep the Defense Coun-
cil awake at night."

“But everyone was here to-
day."

“To welcome you. That's a
big occasion to us."

“It's the biggest thing that
ever happened to me," Fred
Williams said.

“I know," Pat answered
quietly. “I saw your mind.
But ril change that, Fred."

She stood up and brushed
her hands over her dress.

“Where will I see you
again?" he asked.

“You never will."

He stood up to protest.

“Not in the body," she
amended.

He looked so mournful that
she walked over and kissed
him.

“There's a good-by present.
Diver. But we will meet reg-
ularly."

Finding him sitting with
a pile of apple cores beside
him, the doctor clicked his
tongue reprovingly.

“Tell me. Doc, how could
you stop me Diving?" asked
Fred worriedly.

“Fill you full of vitamins
and carbohydrates and alcohol
and send you on a pleasure-
cruise with a lot of accom-
plished women," said Dr.
Howard Sprinnell promptly.
“Or allow you to stuff yourself
with apples, for a start. Now
come along or I'll bar you
from the exercise room."

Fred Williams followed him
thoughtfully.

“By the way," the doctor
said over his shoulder, “your
wife thinks you're under ar-
rest. You’ve been here four
days so far and we can keep
you another ten or so. After
that you’ll have to go back.
You're on our payroll now, but
you'd better keep your job.
Or we can find you a heavier
one, if you're not tired enough.

THE DIVERS

We’ll seal a miniature trans-
mitter into your larynx under
the skin before you leave, so
that you can report audibly
from wherever you are. Div-
ing has the same effect on the
body as sleep, you’ll find, so
you can do both at once. I’ll
grade off the injections before
you leave here. Now^ this is the
political field as we know
it . .

They stood in a large lecture
hall, filled with spaced models
of the Solar System, set in
the Milky Way and surround-
ed by the related galaxies.

‘‘Here’s the spiral in Andro-
meda,” said the doctor, using
a long pointer. “I understand
you went there ...”

He took Fred Williams on a
general tour of the hall.

“Of course there are others
not shown here,” he concluded.
“The Coma- Virgo system of
galaxies, for one example. But
these are the ones politically
important at this time. In Sag-
ittarius, we have a problem.
There’s a human colony there
— a very early one, as a matter
of fact — which we’re sending
an envoy to. But we don’t
know what sort of an envoy
they are expecting, whether he
should be a technical agrono-
mist, a sociologist, a radiation
expert, or a plain folksy re-
minder of Earth, or what. A
simple problem really, but a
mistake will cost us several
billion credits to correct. So
your first assignment, under
Pat’s tuition, will be to find out

and report. When you get
back, you’ll rank officially as a
Diver. Rendezvous is over the
Peninsula, above San Fran-
cisco ; you can’t miss it. Take
your mind there before you
leave and come back there on
the way in. Around fifteen
thousand feet is the recom-
mended height, but that, like
your mind, is immaterial, if
you’ll pardon the pun. And
now I suggest you go down to
the police gym and take some
good strong exercise so that
you feel properly tired for the
journey.”

Dr. Howard Sprinnell put
his hands in his pockets and
gazed at his polished shoes.

“I don’t quite know how to
say this, Fred,” he continued,
“but I’m responsible for you
Divers. You’re entitled to your
own forms of amusement, of
course, but please remember
you are being watched by Psis.
No dropping in on the Presi-
dent’s bedroom. Other people’s
bedrooms, all right, though I
trust you’ll keep out of mine.
But do nothing that could
make you be considered a secu-
rity risk. That is the only thing
that would worry us.”

Fred Williams assured him
and left the hall to go down to
the police gym. He did not un-
derstand why the warning
should be necessary. On the
other hand, you could take it
as a delicate permission to do
anything that was not a secu-
rity risk. He passed the police
canteen and restrained himself

JAMES STAMERS

from going in to order a
doughnut with Martian syrup.
It would keep him from Div-
ing.

He rose into the atmos-
phere above the city and
headed across America to the
rendezvous above the West
Coast. The Earth spun away
from beneath him. He had
time to be surprised that in
the few hours back on Earth
he had forgotten the unbur-
dened clarity of mind in a
Dive. He knew who he was. He
was unquestionably Fred Wil-
liams up here, as much as he
was Fred Williams down
there. But here he felt differ-
ent, free, while down there he
was embedded and obscured in
a shell of a body. Here, this
time, his vision was not limited
to a forward cone but extended
in a complete sphere around
him.

He saw the large nick in the
coast ahead and came down to
meet his tutor Diver.

Pat had said he looked like
the inside of an egg, but he
was not prepared for the great
ovoid poised there below him.
He came up to her with a rush
and found he was even bigger
by comparison. When they
touched, he heard her voice.
There was a slight resistance
as his mind met hers and then
she slipped inside his, so that
he enclosed her mind within
his ovoid mind.

‘‘One of the disadvantages
of a Diver,'’ she said quietly

within him, •‘is that we can
only talk to each other by con-
tact. A Psi could see our
thoughts radiating out like an
aurora, but we can't. We trav-
el this way when two Divers
are together, which isn't often,
so that we both think of going
to the same place. If we do get
separated, come back here im-
mediately and we'll start
again."

“Fine."

''Please, The very gentlest
suggestion of vocalizing will
do. That was like a cannon."

“Sorry."

“Much better. Now, gently,
out. Think of rising slowly . . ,
That's right."

They rose away from the
Earth.

“Over there," she prompted,
“is the galactic spiral arm we
are in. See, running from
Orion? The Solar System is
out here on a limb. Over here
is where we're going, deep into
the Galaxy, our own galaxy.
You'll soon pick up the main
roads. See that fan-shaped
arch? That's a T-Tauri varia-
ble, signposts to us. Think of
being just off that one now."

He did — and there they
were, in a dark lane of the
Milky Way.

“Now you can imagine what
would happen if we were mov-
ing separately and turned our
minds to different points. You
have to go back and start
again then. Now, we're going
down this dark lane."

They moved through the

THE DIVERS

splendor of the Milky Way,
through vast lanes of fine dark
nebulae, across a giant rift,
past glowing clouds of hydro-
gen and oxygen and bright ex-
panding shells, rings within
rings, flowing out from intense
stars in their center as if the
star were a pebble dropped in
a pond of burning space, the
planetary nebulae.

The Sagittarian region was
well known to Pat and she
commented on the Lagoon, and
Omega and Trifid Nebula sus-
pended around them. The local
system they sought lay off a
loose globular star cluster, one
of a crowd here deep in toward
the center of the Galaxy, the
bright core around which the
spiral arms of the entire Milky
Way ponderously swung.

He was part engrossed in
the technique of moving his
mind, part awed by the variety
and beauty of the Galaxy, and
part lost in the beauty of the
mind within him. She moved
with deft, clear thought like
the chime of crystals. The sen-
sory images of Earth were
gross and distorted projections
of the way he saw her, but she
was at once the beating
rhythm beneath rock-and-roll
and the abstracted clarity of
Chopin, the summer wind and
the warmth of a wine. He held
her mind within his in a new
union so complete that any-
thing else was mere fumbling.

“Thank you,” he heard her
voice say gently, and they sank
down toward the rings of

small planets they had come to
visit.

A COLONY from Earth im-
plied an atmosphere, and
several planets in the group
indeed looked fuzzy. The two
Divers skimmed rapidly from
one to another in a general
survey, selected the largest of
those which might support
man, and sank down through
its belts of radiation.

The central mass of land lay
beneath thin clouds, through
which the local sun shone in
drifting spotlights over the
cultivated areas and irregular
groups of cities.

“When we get closer,” her
voice said, “you’ll see them
walking about inside their
minds, which to us will be
cloudy colored eggs around
them. They cannot see this, of
course, any more than a non-
Psi or we ourselves on Earth.
If it isn’t obvious what they
are thinking, we’ll have to go
close enough to touch their
minds with ours. But be very
careful before you do that. If
they are very empty-minded,
there is a risk that their body
magnetism will polarize your
mind in temporarily. You can
get out again, but it’s messy
and unpleasant while it lasts.
And it’s almost impossible to
avoid being sucked into a me-
dium’s mind, so I hope they
haven’t got any.”

They were now over the
main city and headed toward
a large domed building, appar-

JAMES STAMERS

ently modeled on the Capitol.

“How did they get here ?” he
^skcd

“We don’t really know. The
contacts so far have been by
radio to a very early investi-
gating fleet. Obviously they
must have come out after the
hyper-space drive was invent-
ed— we’re over twenty thou-
sand light-years from Earth,
here, I’m told — but they don’t
seem to realize the difficulties
of sending them the envoy they
asked for. Assuming these are
the people that wanted one.”

“Look, an old landcar —
down there on the street!” he
exclaimed.

The colony apparently still
used ground vehicles. As they
came closer, they could see peo-
ple walking in the streets and
moving in and out of door-
ways. There were no moving
sidewalks, personal vertijets,
anti-gravs. It was cleaner but
otherwise as old-fashioned as
the quarter in which Fred
Williams lived on Earth.

“Imagine coming so far — to
find this,” he said, disappoint-
ed.

“You’ll find colonies are
usually several generations be-
hind, but let’s not be too
hasty,” she said. “We can have
a look around later. First, let’s
see if we have the right planet
and get this envoy matter out
of the way. Down through the
dome, here.”

They passed through the
weather sheathing and curved
girders of the dome into an

THE DIVERS

assembly hall full of human
beings, seated around a central
dais. The colonists had appar-
ently been inspired by Con-
gress. A quick glance at their
minds showed they were poli-
ticians, no better and no worse
than the Earth variety, intent
on compromise and the ex-
change of benefits between the
groups of interests they seem-
ed to represent. Several car-
ried visibly in their minds one
fixed interest and a quick
count showed that agriculture
was, in one form or another,
the main business of the col-
ony.

“I think that answers it,”
she said. “We’ll have to check
on the other planets, but farm
problems seem to be what
they’re most concerned about.”

He felt dissatisfied. “Should-
n’t we touch one of their minds
to see if this is really the polit-
ical center? It may only be a
village meeting.”

It seemed incongruous to
use the wonderful reach of
Diving to gather little facts
like this and to depart know-
ing nothing else. Then again,
he recalled the doctor describ-
ing it as a simple problem.

He felt her mind move un-
derstandingly within his. “All
right, let’s touch the Speaker
and see how far his authority
goes. He’d be very conscious of
a superior Congress if there is
one.”

They moved together to the
dais and brushed against the
Speaker’s mind. The short,

bald man sitting impressively
in the center* of the bubble im-
mediately leaned forward and
banged his gavel. The entire
assembly rose to their feet and
stood still. The Speaker slouch-
ed in his chair. His mind shook
off the influences of his body
and rose up to touch the two of
them.

“Welcome, at last,” he said.

“You have been expecting
us?”

“Of course. Though why do
you say ‘us’?”

They moved partly from
each other, overlapping only at
the extreme limit of their own
minds, so that he could see
there were two of them to-
gether.

A gasp sounded in the
Speaker’s mind like an echo
and there was a movement
throughout the assembly.

“Can they hear us?” Pat
asked.

“Naturally. Psi capacity is
a minimum requirement for
the Senate. Can’t you hear
us?”

“Only by mental contact.”

“How odd,” the Speaker re-
plied. “Still, we ourselves can-
not merge in each other, only
into housings.”

“Housings?”

“But surely ... You must
know. Of course you must.”

“Pm afraid we don’t.”

“For heaven’s sake, what
part of the Solar System do
you come from that you
don’t know a housing when
you see one? Ganymede, Mer-

cury, Jove, Venus, Bacchus?
Although I was under the im-
pression that the entire system
used the same terms.”

“One moment,” Fred said.
“What system are you talking
about?”

“This system here, natural-
ly.”

“We come from a different
part of the Galaxy, a part that
is called the Solar System by
those who live there.”

There was a multiple rus-
tling of thoughts which dis-
turbed the Speaker momen-
tarily.

“Please, gentlemen, please!
Will every Senator please quit
his housing so that we have
less of these physical interrup-
tions ?”

Every member of the as-
sembly sat down, relaxed
his body and rose gently above
it with a clear and uncluttered
mind.

“Thank you. Senators,” the
Speaker said. “Now. Do we
understand that you come
from some other part of our
galaxy ?”

“Yes,” Pat said. “We call it
the Milky Way.”

“So do we.”

“You probably brought the
name with you.”

“You are suggesting that we
came from you and brought
the name of the Galaxy with
us?”

“Why, yes.”

“I see. Would you identify
this solar system of yours?”

JAMES STAMERS

Pat held in her mind a pic-
ture of the Solar System and
the Sun, embedded in the long
spiral arm of the Galaxy. She
made the image of the Earth
expand and contract in empha-
sis.

“Thank you. So you come
from that little system, do
you ? How interesting. And yet
you have never heard of hous-
ings.”

“We call them bodies."

“Well, so they are. I recall a
primitive energy transmis-
sion we had here long ago. We
extended an invitation to the
operators, but they have not so
far arrived. They came from
your system, or so they said.”

“They did. They contacted
you by what we call radio. We
were sent, frankly, to see what
sort of envoy should be sent
here to you.”

“Ah ! There has been a nat-
ural confusion. We thought
you were here from one of our
outer systems where we are
having some difficulty raising
the right housing. In fact, we
were just debating the correct
form of grain to transmit to
feed the housings on. They are
in the awkward stage of hav-
ing sufficient minds to exist,
but insufficient nerve cortex to
enable us to enter them. Our
local represenatives — whom
we mistook you for — have
been having a very difficult
time for several hundred
years, but we will soon find
the answer. Now, we will be
glad to receive an envoy from

THE DIVERS

ybur system. We are always
glad to receive representatives
from our successful colonies.
As to the type of envoy, any-
one with a broad galactic view-
point will do. We will, of
course, be glad to offer housing
and the usual facilities.”
“When you say housing, you
mean bodies?”

“Naturally. Bodies such as
these Senators’ or my own
are the most adaptable for
this climate. If you go in to
our Ganymede or out to Jove
you would have to use a local —
er — body, because these hu-
man types would melt or suffo-
cate respectively. But the local
housings in silica and in am-
monia crystal have proved
quite adequate for normal loco-
motion and physical work
there. The normal facilities of
the sport planets would be
available, to be sure. We are
quite proud of our slither
bodies, I suppose you would
call them, in the snow worlds
— quite a recent development.
I fear we are not too luxurious
here, but galactic opinion
forces us to make our housings
do almost everything they are
capable of doing — ^walk, drive,
cook and other such menial
tasks. But then at least every-
one knows we are not spending
the revenue on our own hous-
ing— er — our own bodies. Only
last century we barely averted
a political threat to make all
Senators’ bodies sleep out in
the open weather. But obvious-
ly it is much moi’e expensive

to keep breeding new bodies
than build a shelter such as
this one. Even taxpayers can
see that.”

The Speaker’s mind echoed
general agreement from the
Senators.

“It will come as a surprise,”
Pat said clearly, “but our sys-
tem believes we colonized
yours.”

This met polite and general
laughter in which the Speaker
joined.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you
would care to communicate di-
rect with the Senators who
were in charge of your system
during the developmental
stages. Will the Senators
please come forward for con-
tact?”

Seven of the minds above
the floor of the Senate drifted
over to touch peripherally
against each other and against
Pat and Ered.

“When we first undertook
that project,” one or all of
them said, “your system was
entirely unpopulated. On the
third planet, we found, how-
ever, roughly humanoid apes
in isolated caves and by selec-
tive breeding we succeeded in
making that species into a
housing identical with those
we use on this planet. Unfor-
tunately, only the less stable
minds of the Galaxy were
prepared to live quite so far
out and we eventually lost
touch. Is the same housing
still used?”

“So much so,” Pat told
38

them, “that we cannot nor-
mally detach ourselves.”

“You mean you send bodies
from place to place?”

“Yes. The radio signals you
received were from a space-
ship containg men in their
own bodies.”

“Remarkable. Naturally,
we accept your statement.
But this implies considerable
technical skill — and a prodig-
ious disregard for the taxpay-
ers’ money. You mean there
were actually men out there
in bodies sending energy
transmissions, instead of vis-
iting us in the mind from
Earth?”

“Yes.”

“Remarkable. Very remark-
able. Can you spare the time
to tell us more about this?
We can accommodate you
with a double housing or sep-
arate housing, whichever you
prefer.”

“May I withdraw to consult
with my colleague?” Pat ask-
ed.

“Of course. We will continue
our debate.”

The Senators returned to
their forms and the Speaker,
sinking back into his body,
recalled the assembly to their
discussion of agricultural
problems.

OVER the dome, Pat slipped
inside Fred Williams’
mind again. They thought of
the enormous space-ships de-
veloped over many centuries
and at uncounted cost to give

JAMES STAMERS

men favorable odds in an un-
favorable environment. And
of the hazardous shifting of
power based on bomb-satel-
lites, and the fence upon fence
of security precautions on
which Earth and the Solar
System depended. Or rather,
when they considered it, on
which their local population
depended. It was not a prob-
lem for two Divers but for a
team of specialists.

They returned to the
Speaker.

“We would like to consult
with the original Earth Sen-
ators again and perhaps bor-
row two — housings — for a
a short while.”

“With the greatest pleas-
ure.”

The Senators concerned
quitted their housings and
floated across the assembly to
join them. They all rose to-
gether to the outside of the
dome, where they would not
disturb the debate below.

“One of the questions,”
Fred said, “is what happens
if we died — ^by accident, for
example — ^while in a borrow-
ed housing.”

“You imply a question as
to what happens to any of
your people, since they have
lost the power to detach them-
selves, or do not make use of
it.”

“Yes.”

“Unfortunately,” one or all
of the Senators replied, “we do
not know. It is said there is
a continual production of new

minds in the universe, which
appear here and there, where-
ever there are suitable hous-
ings. Others disagree but have
no real answer. If we lend you
housing — a panther-style
body for personal racing on
the grass steppes, say, or a
vast whale-style body for en-
joying some of our oceans,
and so on, there is some risk.
Among certain cultures, we
find a return of the mind to a
similar vacant housing. In
other places, we have found
an obscuration of the mind.
We think there are parallel
universes differing from this
as mind-form differs from
substance. And we believe
each mind continues in these
further dimensions. This
would be practical if you were
unable to leave a dying hous-
ing. Our advice is not to get
caught in any accidents.

“Should it be advantageous
to you, we will keep housings
ready for you here. One male
and one female, of course. Ah
— on one question which you
did not ask — you will find our
guest housings are a uniform
breed which became popular
on your Planet among the
Greeks and Romans as ideal
godlike forms, shortly before
we returned here.

“And as to the other ques-
tion you have not asked — ^we
never interfere with local cul-
tures, for the greater the va-
riety of each, the greater the
enrichment of all. Your sys-
tem is entirely safe; we pro-

THE DIVERS

pose to observe it more closely
from now on. It is our im-
pression, however, that you
would be wise not to mention
the galactic system we rep-
resent, when you return to
your Earth. It would be too
upsetting to the established
pattern. We are all human
beings, but we have solved
the same problems in very dif-
ferent ways.”

“We have not solved ours,”
Fred said.

“Oh, neither have we. But
at least the few of us here,
including yourselves, at any
time as our guests, have
achieved what you would
probably call immortality.”

“We are free to accept your
invitation at any time?”

“Certainly.”

“Then we will report that
no other envoy is needed,”
Pat said clearly.

“That would be beneficial
indeed.”

“And may we send you
a very limited number of
friends?”

“Your guests shall be our
guests. Again, we suggest you
limit knowledge of us so far
as possible.”

“We are called Divers be-
cause we can leave our bodies.
Only Divers could visit you
in this way, and we will not
send any others.”

“Thank you. It is largely
our fault. We have come
across traces here and there
of other colonies which we as-
sumed were the successful re-

suit of past experiments. It
occurs to us now that several
of these may be in fact body-
bound expeditions from your
solar system. We will investi-
gate and correct our cata-
logues.”

“We can be of assistance
there,” Pat answered.

“Excellent. We wish you
Godspeed and a pleasant re-
turn.”

The nine minds released
contact and moved apart.
Fred felt Pat’s mind slip into
his. They rose off the dome
and increased speed, soaring
into the sky and out, above
the ring of planets.

“Why didn’t we borrow a
couple of bodies?” Fred asked.

He could picture himself
strutting elegantly in the body
of a Greek god, with Pat to
match beside him.

“Please stop that — we’re
zigzagging about. You’re new,
Fred. Every Diver goes
through the same routine — a
pep-talk from the President,
Doctor Sprinnell’s little tricks,
your first Dive all over the
universe, and then routine
patrols. What you don’t know
is that whenever we Divers
come into contact with anoth-
er race or another form of
life, we are invariably offered
gifts of some sort. Primitives
sense the presence of a Diver
and put on a show, lay out
food and their treasures. The
more advanced, using trained
telepaths, try to bribe us.

JAMES STAMERS

And so on, without exception.”
“Okay, so I’m new, Pat. So
I don’t know the pattern. A
few days ago I was a slob in
an automation-parts supply
house and now I’m here with
you at the back end of the
Milky Way, or the center,
whichever way you look at it.
But Doc Spinner made some
pretty odd cracks to me about
security and I don’t like the
idea of being spied on all the
time back on Earth.”

“No Diver does. The De-
fense Council put us in bus-
iness, but now they are afraid
of us, in a way. We can go
anywhere and see anything.
We might have a look at their
secret installations or their
private files. Then we would
be in trouble.”

“Well, I didn’t ask to come
into this. But now that I’m
in and a Diver, just one fancy
move by Security and I’m off
to get another body. That
sounds odd, doesn’t it? But I
mean it.”

“I’m glad.”

“Eh?”

“I’m very glad, Fred. I
wanted to see how you’d take
it. I feel the same way. It’s
true we’re always offered
presents, but immortality is
something larger than a pres-
ent. And to get out from
under the thumb of the Psis
and their spying is something
all of us have been longing
for.”

“And I’ll tell you something
else, Pat. From now on, if the

THE DIVERS

other Divers agree, we’ll do
what we want. Oh, the Solar
System can have its patrol-
ling. I’ll have to learn how
that’s done from you. We’ll
tell them what they want to
know. But one sign of inter-
ference and we’re off, and
they can keep the bodies. We
won’t tell them they are a
backward colony that has for-
gotten how to Dive. But we
know it. We won’t tell them
the rest of the Galaxy is run
from the center back in Sag-
ittarius by humans who can
Dive. But we know that too.
If I thought at all about it, I
thought we were freaks, use-
ful nuisances. And I didn’t
mind being ordered about. But
we’re not freaks, Pat. We’re
the normal human beings that
the Senate back there meant
to create. It’s the Solar Sys-
tem that is lop-sided, not us.”

“I’m not — overinfluencing
you, Fred?”

“Hell, of course you are. I
can hardly think of you with-
out looping around a star.
But the facts are the same.
And from today, we’re not
Divers. We’re the Free Di-
vers, housing where we wish
to, seeing what we want . . .”

“And protecting the Solar
System, Fred.”

“Well — they’re entitled to
that. And we’ll keep to their
security regulations for our
bodies on Earth, if it makes
them happy. We can afford
to give a little here and
there.”

They shot together through
the nearest T-Tauri variable
arch and zoomed happily.
After a while, they returned
to the rendezvous off the
American coast on Earth. The
other Divei’s were waiting for
them.

“It’s a custom,’’ Pat told
him as they approached the
nine Divers, hovering in
space, “to greet you as a new
Diver.”

They closed together as
they met, within Fred’s larger
shell. He told them. There
were no doubts among their
minds.

“Sooner or later,” Fred
finished, “one of us was
bound to meet the true Galac-
tics we’ve just met. It hap-
pened to be Pat and myself.
I’m new and don’t know much
about Diving, but I’ve seen
enough to know that from
now on I’m a Free Diver.”

“So are we all,” they an-
swered.

Returning across Amer-
ica in the one shell, they
scattered confusion and head-
ache throughout the psi-
watching stations in their
path by the scramble of elev-
en sets of thoughts. Then they
separated and left Fred to go
down to his body while they
returned to theirs in the dif-
ferent places Security had put
them. Pat followed him down
as a precaution.

This time, Fred Williams’
body fitted his mind with a

greater feeling of strangeness
but less muddling. The smal-
ler consciousnesses of his
body did not obscure his per-
ceptions; he was aware of it
as a housing for his mind.

He looked at Dr. Howard
Sprinnell, who had listened to
him so far in silence, uncom-
menting and unmoved, a mild,
friendly face in the small
medical room.

“So, Fred. I warned you,
Pat warned you. You go out
on two Dives, a few days after
discovering that such things
exist, and you come back to
give me an ultimatum for the
Solar Government. A lifetime
here in the drabbest, almost
medieval surroundings of the
city and, after a few days, you
come back announcing you’re
a Free Diver, owing nothing
to anyone. Is that right? Do
you still stick to that?”

Fred nodded.

“You realize what we can
do to you, Fred? Dammit, on
your first Dive you almost
went out of space-time alto-
gether, only you didn’t know
what you were doing. Do you
know what you’re doing now ?
Do you think I’ve spent twen-
ty years searching for nega-
tive Psis for government ser-
vice so that you can turn them
against the Solar System?”

“Hold on. Doc. No one said
anything about being against
the Solar System. If there’s
work to be done, we’ll do it.
But in our own way and with-
out being spied on.”

JAMES STAMERS

“Just give me one reason
why the government should
trust you, with the entire Se-
curity system.”

“Because,” Fred said care-
fully, “you may have my body,
but in my mind I am a Free
Diver.”

“And nothing anyone can
say will change that, eh?”
“No.”

“You know,” Dr. Howard
Sprinnell said reflectively,
“you’re talking as if you had
another body cached away
somewhere.”

“Whoever heard of that?”
“Lots of people, Fred. Voo-
doo zombies, certain Mahay-
ana religious leaders, prehis-
toric Egyptians — there’s quite
a well documented tradition.
But the great problem has al-
ways been to find a leader
with the courage to do it sci-
entifically and in the inter-
ests of all the people, not just
the members of some sect.
Give a man the universe to
play in and he doesn’t mind
a few rules as long as he’s
allowed to play. Finding neg-
ative Psis and creating th^e
Divers as an organized official
body was easy compared with
the task of completing the ex-
periment— by making one of
them revolt! Nine of the ten
before you were too easily sat-
isfied. Diving according to the
rules and regulations was
enough for them.”

“Who was the tenth?”

“Pat, She was the prettiest
and most discontented. I

thought I could stir up some
fire.”

“You did.”

“Ah, good. I am high-Psi,
by the way. I seem to feel
she’s somewhere around here.
However ... I can never be a
Diver myself, but years ago
I formed the theory that a lot
of phenomena could be ex-
plained by minds reaching out
beyond their bodies. Now be
careful, Fred. I don’t want to
know. The Security Psis are
very real and there are a lot
of things I cannot afford to
know. I’m a Solar Govern-
ment servant, remember. But
it seemed to me there might
conceivably be a life-form
somewhere in the universe
which used the body as a ve-
hicle for its convenience. I
hoped one day the Divers
would find such a life-form,
and if I made the regulations
stiff enough and supplied one
or two other irritations, one
Diver might decide to make
the jump, to revolt and stand
on his own feet. Free Divers,
you called yourselves, eh? A
good name. I don’t want to
know \^here your base — your
other base — is, Fred. I only
want to know there is a group
of people willing to serve the
Solar Government regardless
of time, theoretically for eter-
nity— that’s what it amounts
to when you work it out. As
I say. I’m just a government
servant. And thanks. Free
Diver.”

He held out his hand and

THE DIVERS

shook Fred's. “From now on,
Fred, you can all come and go
as you wish. If you feel like
keeping to the security regu-
lations, fine. But I’ll make it
clear to the Defense Council
that there’s nothing they can
do about it if you don’t. Men
who don’t mind losing their
bodies have always been some-
what beyond the power of a
government.’’

“On that basis, Doc, I don’t
mind continuing the way you
planned.’’

“Laryngeal transmitter,
continue your cover-job and
the rest?”

“Don’t see why not.”

“Come along then. You’re
due to be released from jail.”

Fred followed the doctor in-
to the operating room.

He remembered the

beer this time. Elsie lay
back on her bed, drinking
from the can, one of her scuffs
dangling from a bare toe.

“The trouble with you,
Fred, is you can’t even rob an
office.”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s what I mean. See?
You just can’t do anything.”
He lay back on his own ted
and looked at her. There were
a lot of things you didn’t mind

putting up with, voluntarily.
You married her, so you’d
look after her, trudge to the
shipping room to work and
trudge back. The tireder you
got, the better.

For evening came every
day, and with the evening
came sleep for his housing
and eight hours for patrolling
the Galaxy. And beyond the
system, out beyond the dark
lanes, there were endless
fonns of life . . . and the two
great developments of men,
one stemming from the other
in different ways, but each ex-
panding, colonizing, growing
. . . all with problems for the
Free Divers he led.

“Wouldja get me another
beer, Fred?”

“Sure.”

He remembered to slouch
into the kitchen, as if he did
not care. And when you con-
sidered it, he didn’t care at
all. This was one path of hu-
man developments the Sen-
ators never thought of.

“Trouble with you, Fred, is
you’re just a negative char-
acter. You weren’t when I
married you, but you are
now.”

Well, she was certainly en-
titled to a beer for that.

END

There is a way to do this better . . . find it.

Thomas A. Edison

Dissolute

Diplomat

By BOB SHAW & WALT WILLIS

After you finish this story

try doing a blurb

that does not give away the point.

It can’t be done!

GRINGLEDOONK lay in a
comfortable floor dish, ex-
perimenting with himself out
of sheer boredom. From three
points along his perimeter he
projected slim pseudopods, in-

tertwined them for a short
distance in the center, then
split the end of each in two
and looped them out to form
six little hooks.

Listlessly he solidified the

edifice and extruded an eye to
examine it. It did not look like
much.

There were several races in
the Federation who covered
their bodies with fabrics, and
this thing he had made might
have been useful to one of
them, but not to anybody civi-
lized. More bored than ever, he
commenced the slow process
of dissolving the hardened
pseudopods.

A low whistle came from
the entrance of the tubeway
in the palace wall. The little
circular door opened and
Mugg, his Minister of Home
Affairs, shot out onto the floor.
He lay for a moment in the
bullet shape that Gyoinks used
for traveling the tubeway ;
then he re-formed and flowed
into the floor dish beside Grin-
gledoonk.

When he had stopped rip-
pling, Mugg extruded an eye
and, on seeing the peculiar
shape his ruler had assumed,
kept popping out more and
bigger eyes to get a better
view. Gringledoonk watched
the process with disgust. No
matter how often he was told
about it, Mugg never seemed
to realize how ill-mannered
such displays of curiosity
were.

“What,” Mugg finally en-
quired, “have you done to
yourself. Your Softness?”

“Never mind that,” Grin-
gledoonk said irritably. “Why
did you come here ? You know
this is my rest period.”

“It's important,” Mugg re-
plied. “A spaceship on normal
drive has entered the system
and is heading for this plan-
et.”

For an instant Gringle-
doonk lost the cool green color-
ing that befitted his position
and allowed his natural mot-
tled orange to show through.
“What? What sort of a space-
ship?”

“It appears to be a Terran
ship. Your Fluidity.”

‘“The Treaty does not allow
Terran ships to land here,”
Gringledoonk said. “This is
most unexpected. We’ll have
to check the libraries on how
to receive the officers of a Ter-
ran ship.”

He moved out of his dish,
balancing the still rigid tripod
with difficulty, and into the
entrance port of the tubeway.
The soft, warm radiance there
helped him dissolve and reab-
sorb the cumbersome exten-
sion, and he vanished into the
narrow aperture of the tube-
way.

After years of inactivity,
Gringledoonk, Lord and Rep-
resentative of the Gyoinks,
was back in business.

Hal PORTMAN was hold-
ing a moderate 800C
when his warp-drive genera-
tors gave a low sigh and van-
ished into some unknown di-
mension. The ancient Morris
Starcruiser emerged into nor-
mal space with a sickening
jiggle.

BOB SHAW & WALT WILLIS

On checking his position,
Portman found that there was
a planet called Yoink so close,
astronomically speaking, that
he could have spat on it. He
tapped out Yoink's coordi-
nates on his destination selec-
tor and began drinking beer
in preparation.

Two days and thirty-two
cans of beer later, the Star-
cruiser bulleted down for a
landing.

Wiping white froth from
his bristly upper lip, Portman
opened the lock and went
down onto springy yellow
turf. He found himself sur-
rounded by a varicolored
crowd of beings of indetermi-
nate shape who chittered at
him excitedly. He could not
decide whether their agitation
was due to the sudden appear-
ance of his ship or the fact
that it seemed to have crush-
ed a number of their plastic
buildings on arrival.

He drew his sidearm and
shouted, “Silence, friends. I
am a citizen of — uh — Imperi-
al Earth and I command your
obedience. I want — ”

One of the waist-high cones
of jelly interrupted him by
sprouting an enormous mouth
and bellowing something about
violations of the Treaty. Port-
man gave the little alien a
short burst from his Colt .045
which reduced it to a pile of
crackling cinders.

“You’re only saying that be-
cause you’re jellos,” he joked
hastily, feeling that it might

DISSOLUTE DIPLOMAT

be better to pass the incident
off. The directory had stated
that the Gyoinks were non-
aggressive, but there was no
point in not acting in a friend-
ly manner. He knew about the
Treaty, but the cargo of con-
traband luminous furs that he
had tucked away would have
caused unwelcome comment
if he had waited for an AA
repair ship.

“Now listen, friends,” he
repeated, brandishing the
weapon. “We’ll get along as
long as nobody argues or tries
to get funny. My ship has
broken down. Replace the
warp generators and I’ll be
on my way.’’

“Imperial Earth will be
grateful,” he added as an
afterthought. This diplomacy
stuff was a cinch for a guy
who knew how to handle peo-
ple and things.

SEVERAL of the Gyoinks
immediately extruded
stumpy legs and waddled up
the ramp into the ship. Others
went off toward a larger dome-
shaped building, muttering
something about going for
tools.

Portman went into the ship
and obtained a further supply
of beer, booting aside any of
the Gyoinks who got in his
way, then lay down on the
bright turf and contentedly
watched the work progress.
In spite of the fact that the
Gyoinks were just animated
trifles, he had to admit that

they were pretty good space-
drive mechanics.

Later in the afternoon as
Portman sat on the ramp,
smoking under the brilliantly
pink sky, a Gyoink approached
from the direction of the town
on the horizon. This was a
large, pale green Gyoink who
looked unfamiliar to Portman.
^ “What do you want? You’re
disturbing a representative of
Imperial Earth.”

“I know, I know,” the
Gyoink replied humbly. “My
name is Gringledoonk.”

“Anything to the Boston
Gringledoonks?” Portman
queried genially.

“No,” Gringledoonk said,
wincing slightly. “I come to
apologize for the conduct of
my people earlier. When I
heard that you were here, I
came from the Capital to make
sure you would receive the
proper attention due to a rep-
resentative of — ”

“Yeah, yeah, I should think
so,” Portman cut in. “One of
those jellos argued with me to-
day. Argued ! How do you like
that ?” He took the cigar from
between his thick lips and
pursed them in disapproval.

“Most regrettable,” the
Gyoink agreed. “I can assure
you there will be no more such
incidents. My people are igno-
rant of the formalities in-
volved in the reception of the
captain of a Terran ship. For-
tunately, our libraries contain
something about the traditions

of the great Earth space fleets
and, from now on, we will ob-
serve those traditions to the
best of our limited ability.”
“That’s more like it,” Port-
man said.

IT HAD been necessary to
dismantle the ship’s power
plant and, as the Yoink nights
were chilly and the installa-
tion of the new generatora
would not be completed until
the morning, Portman was
moved into one of the little
plastic huts about a mile from
the ship. He found that the
Gyoinks had rigged up a ham-
mock, of all things, but it took
him only a short while to find
the knack of sleeping in it.

In the morning he was
wakened by the sound of bells
and the insistent prodding of
a Gyoink who was proffering
a glass of brown liquid on a
small tray. The Gyoink’s shiny
surface had become bright
blue. Portman demanded to
know what was going on.

“Eight bells, sir,” the Gy-
oink replied. “Your breakfast
is ready.” There w^as a note of
eager sincerity in the Gyoink’s
voice.

Portman stretched luxuri-
ously in the hammock, took
the glass and found that the
Gyoinks had contrived to pro-
duce a pretty fair rum. Grin-
ning with satisfaction, he got
up and lumbered out of the
hut, stooping to get through
the low door.

Outside, a flat open convey-
BOB SHAW & WALT WILLIS

ance on four wheels, manned
by two more blue Gyoinks, was
waiting. It looked brand new
and had lifebelts slung along
the sides.

“The Chief Engineer re-
ports that your ship is ready,
sir,” one of the Gyoinks said.
“Step aboard and we will take
you to it, sir. Aye, aye, sir.”

Portman got into the car
and sat down. As he was being
driven the short distance to
his ship, he found himself al-
most wishing that he was not
leaving so soon. Once the jellos
had come to understand that
he was the boss, they had been
all right, in spite of being such
ugly brutes.

When they arrived at the
battered old Starcruiser, Port-
man hardly recognized it. Its
hull was shining with a rich
brassy brilliance in the morn-
ing sunlight. Gringledoonk
was waiting for him on a little
platform at the foot of the
ramp up to the airlock. Other
bright blue Gyoinks stood in
quivering rows nearby.

“Good morning, sir,” Grin-
gledoonk said, his voice
charged with friendliness. “I
hope that the launch we con-
structed for you was comfort-
able.”

“The launch? Oh, yeah —
very smooth. One of the jellos
said the ship was ready. Is
it?” Portman stepped out onto
the platform.

“Everything is shipshape,
sir,” the Gyoink said. “We are
doing our humble best to do

DISSOLUTE DIPLOMAT

everything in accordance
with — ”

“Yeah, I know. Skip all that
stuff. As long as the new gen-
erators are in. I’ll be satis-
fied.”

“There’s just one more
thing, sir,” Gringledoonk said.
The ranks of Gyoinks moved
aside, revealing a shallow de-
pression in the platform, in
the center of which was a cir-
cular hole about six inches in
diameter. From under the de-
pression a plastic tube led up
the ramp and into the ship.

“What, what ?” Portman
snarled.

“We only use this for long
distances, but our library — ”

“Skip it,” Portman said.

He pushed Gringledoonk
aside and headed for the
bottom of the ramp across the
dish-shaped hollow. Too late
he noticed that there was a
peculiar radiance hovering
above the depression, coming
from little translucent panels
around its perimeter. He tried
to retreat.

But his bones had softened
too rapidly and indeed his feet
were already flowing out of
his shoes onto the floor, to be
joined by what had been his
legs and the remainder of his
unwashed body. He stopped
screaming as his head com-
pleted its ^acious descent,
and his staring eyes remained
visible only for a moment, si-
lently surveying the surface
of the great blob which he had

so unaccountably become. It
liquified still further and the
mortal remains of Harold
Portman ran out through the
hole in the basin with a regret-
tably undignified noise. The
plastic pipe became dark and
murky as he passed up it into
his ship.

“Just a matter of tradi-
tion,” Gringledoonk explained
proudly to the onlookers. “Our
records are incomplete about
Terran space fleet tradition,
but they all agree on one thing
— the Captain is always piped
on board.”

END

The Plastics Revolution

Within the memory of most people now alive, plastics have bounded into
a leading place in all sorts of things from hosiery to construction mate-
rials, yet their potentialities have scarcely been explored. Work now being
done in Germany and Italy may replace or surpass polyethylene, the head
of the polymer or long-chain-molecule family, that the majority of famil-
iar plastics are descended from, along with straight chain alcohols and
cyclic compounds with up to sixteen carbon atoms.

The key now being explored is catalysts of organo-metals, such as
combinations of aluminum, carbon and hydrogen, and titanium and
chlorine.

Dibasic acids with twelve carbon atoms and lactame with thirteen are
produced by the cyclic process, promising new plastics that may outdo
anything currently on the market.

The organo-metallic catalysts make possible an “almost unbelievable”
variety of chemical reactions. Ethylene, for example, is polymerized into
substances of as much as several million molecular weight with atmos-
pheric pressure, whereas less dense substances required high pressure.
Among other qualities, the new plastics, used in tires, may increase mileage
up to 120,000 miles I

The new tetraethyl lead process, if proved practical, should reduce
costs. This new method, when added to gasoline to prevent auto engine
knock, has also been made possible by using catalysts. The United States
alone produces 300,000 tons a year. It was invented in 1920 in America,
and the new process using Ziegler catalysts reduces the need of so much
sodium and chlorine as in the old process. It uses the temperature of boiling
water instead of six to seven times as much heat and about half as much
electrical energy is used.

Nuts to mid talents! Mine

was no satisfaction, never
earned me a penny — and
now it had me fighting for

my life in... THE LITTLE RED BAG

but finding only a sea of clouds
instead. So I returned my at-
tention to the inside of the
plane, to the overstuffed gray-
haired woman asleep beside
me, to the basks of heads in
seats before me, across the
aisle to other heads, and down
to the blonde.

I had seen her in the con-
course and at the gate, a
shapely thing. Now she had
crossed her legs and I was
privileged to view a trim an-
kle and calf, and her profile
as she stared moodily across
the aisle and out a window
where there was nothing to
see.

I slid my eyes past her to
others. A crossword-puzzle
worker, a togetherness-type-
magazine reader.

Inventory completed, I went
back to looking at the clouds,
knowing I should be thinking
about the printing order I was
going to Los Angeles for, and
not wanting to.

So I started going through
the purse of the woman next
to me. Perhaps that sounds
bad. It wasn’t. I’d been doing
it for years and nobody ever
complained.

It started when I was a kid,
this business of being able to
explore the insides of things
like purses and sealed boxes
and locked drawers and — well,
human beings. But human be-
ings aren’t worth the trouble.
It’s like swimming through
spaghetti. And I’ve got to stay
away from electric wires.

They hurt. Now don’t ask me
how they hurt.

Maybe you think it’s fun.
For the most part, it really
isn’t. I always knew what was
in Christmas presents before I
unwrapped them, and there-
fore Christmas was always
spoiled for me as a kid. I can’t
feel the color of anything, just
its consistency. An apple
senses about the same as a po-
tato, except for the core and
the stem. I can’t even tell if
there’s writing on a piece of
paper. So you see it isn’t much.
Just the feel of shapes, the
hardnesses and softnesses. But
I’ve learned to become pretty
good at guessing.

Like this woman next to me.
She had a short, cylindrical
metal object in her purse with
waxlike stuff inside it — a lip-
stick. A round, hard object
with dust inside — a compact.
Handkerchief, chewing gum, a
small book, probably an ad-
dress book, money in a change
purse — a few bills and coins.
Not much else.

I was a little disappointed.
I’ve run across a gun or two in
my time. But I never say any-
thing.

1 LEARNED the wisdom of
keeping my mouth shut in
the fourth grade when Miss
Winters, a stern, white-haired
disciplinarian, ordered me to
eat my sack lunch in the class-
room with her instead of out-
side with some of the other
kids. This was the punishment

JERRY SOHL

for some minor infraction.
Lunchtime was nearly over
and we’d both finished eating ;
she said she’d be gone for a
few moments and that I was to
erase the blackboard during
her absence, which I dutifully
did.

Class had hardly resumed
when she started looking
around the desk for her favo-
rite mechanical pencil, asking
if any of us had seen it, and
looking straight at me. I didn’t
want her to think I had taken
it while she was out of the
room, so I probed the contents
of her purse, which she always
kept in the upper right draw-
er of her desk.

“It’s in your purse,” I blurt-
ed out.

I was sent home with a
stinging note.

Since then I’ve kept quiet.
At one time I assumed every-
body was able to sense. I’ve
known better for years. Still,
I wonder how many other peo-
ple are as close-mouthed about
their special gift as I am about
mine.

I used to think that some
day I’d make a lot of money
out of it, but how? I can’t
read thoughts. I can’t even be
sure what some of the things
1 sense in probing really
are.

But I’ve learned to move
things. Ever so little. A piece
of paper. A feather. Once I
stopped one of' those little
glass-enclosed light or heat-
powered devices with vanes

you see now and then in a jew-
eler’s window. And I can stop
clocks.

Take this morning, for ex-
ample. I had set my alarm for
five-thirty because I had to
catch the seven o’clock plane
at San Francisco International
Airport. This being earlier
than I usually get up, it seems
all I did during the night was
feel my way past the escape-
ment and balance wheel to see
where the notch for the alarm
was. The last time I did it
there was just the merest
fraction of an inch between
the pawl and the notch. So I
sighed and moved to the bal-
ance wheel and its delicate
ribbon of spiraling steel. I
hung onto the wheel, exerting
influence to decrease the re-
storing torque.

The wheel slowed down un-
til there was no more ticking.
It took quite a bit of effort, as
it always does, but I did it, as
I usually do. I can’t stand the
alarm.

When I first learned to do
this, I thought I had it made. I
even went to Las Vegas to try
my hand, so to speak, with the
ratchets and pawls and cams
and springs on the slot ma-
chines. But there’s nothing
delicate about a slot machine,
and the spring tensions are too
strong. I dropped quite a lot of
nickels before I finally gave
up.

So I’m stuck with a talent
I’ve found little real use for.
Except that it amuses me.

THE LITTLE RED BAG

Sometimes. Not like this time
on the plane.

The woman beside me stir-
red, sat up suddenly and look-
ed across me out the window.
“Where are we ?’’ she asked in
a surprised voice. I told her
we were probably a little
north of Bakersfield. She said,
“Oh,” glanced at her wrist-
watch and sank back again.

Soon the stewardesses would
bring coffee and doughnuts
around, so I contented myself
with looking at the clouds and
trying to think about Amos
Magaffey, who was purchas-
ing agent for a Los Angeles
amusement chain, and how I
was going to convince him our
printing prices were maybe a
little higher but the quality
and service were better. My
mind wandered below where I
was sitting, idly moving from
one piece of luggage to an-
other, looking for my beat-up
suitcase. I went through slips
and slippers, lingerie and
laundry, a jig saw puzzle and
a ukulele.

I never did find my suitcase
because I found the bomb first.

The bomb was in a small
bag — a woman’s bag judg-
ing by the soft, flimsy things
you’d never find in a man’s —
and I didn’t know it was a
bomb right away. I thought it
was just a clock, one of those
small, quiet alarms. I was go-
ing to pass it by and go on, but
what held me was that some-
thing was taped to it. By the

feel, I knew it must be electri-
cian’s tape. Interested and
curious, I explored the clock
more closely, found two wires.
One went to a battery and the
other to hard round cylinders
taped together. The hairs
stood up at the base of my
neck when I suddenly realized
what it was.

The clock’s balance wheel
was rocking merrily. Quickly
I went up past the train of
gears to the alarm wheel. If
this was anything like my own
alarm clock, this one had
something like ten minutes to
go.

It was forty minutes to
Burbank and Lockheed Air
Terminal.

My mind was churning
when I turned from the win-
dow to look around at the un-
concerned passengers, the
woman at my side asleep
again. I thought: Which one
of these . . . No, none of them
would know it was there. I
glanced out the window again ;
clouds were still in the way.
We’d be leaving the valley for
the mountain range north of
Los Angeles soon, if we hadn’t
left it already. No place to
land the plane there.

But of course that had been
the plan !

My heart was beating in
jackhammer rhythm ; my
mouth was dry and my mind
was numb. Tell somebody
about the bomb before it’s too
late ! No, they’d think I put it
there. Besides, what good

JERRY SOHL

would it do? There would be
panic and they’d never get the
plane down in time — if they
believed me.

“Sir.” My head jerked
around. The stewardess stood
in the aisle, smiling, extending
a tray to me, a brown plastic
tray bearing a small paper cup
of tomato juice, a cup of cof-
fee, a cellophane-wrapped
doughnut, paper spoon, sugar
and dehydrated cream enve-
lopes, and a napkin.

I goggled at her, managed
to croak, “No, thanks.” She
gave me an odd look and
moved along. My seatmate had
accepted hers and was tearing
at the cellophane. I couldn’t
bear to watch her.

I closed my eyes, forced my
mind back to the luggage com-
partment, spent a frantic mo-
ment before I found the bag
again. I had to stop that bal-
ance wheel, just as I stopped
my alarm clock every morn-
ing. I tried to close everything
off — the throb of engines, the
rush of air, the woman sip-
ping coffee noisily beside me —
and I went into the clock and
surrounded the seesawing
wheel. When it went forward,
I pulled it back ; when it went
back, I pulled it forward. I
struggled with it, and it was
like trying to work with
greasy hands, and I was afraid
I wasn’t going to be able to
stop it.

Then, little by little, it start-
ed to slow its beat. But I could
not afford to relax. I pushed

and pulled and didn’t dare re-
lease my hold until it came to
a dead stop.

“Anything the matter?”

My eyelids flew open and I
looked into the eyes of the
woman next to me. There was
sugar from the doughnut
around her mouth and she was
still chewing.

“No,” I said, letting out my
breath. “I’m all right.”

“You were moaning, it
sounded like. And you kept
moving your head back and
forth.”

“Must have been dream-
ing,” I said as I rang for the
stewardess. When she came I
told her I’d take some of that
coffee now. No, nothing else,
just coffee. I didn’t tell her
how much I needed it. I sat
there clammy with sweat until
she returned. Coffee never
tasted so good.

All right, so I had stopped
the bomb’s timer. My
mind raced ahead to the land-
ing. When they unloaded the
luggage, the balance wheel
would start again. I wouldn’t
be able to stay with it, keeping
it still. I considered telling the
authorities as soon as we land-
ed, or maybe calling in ahead,
but wouldn’t that just bring
suspicion, questions. Maybe I
could convince them I could
stop a clock — ^but not before
the bomb exploded. And then
what? My secret would be out
and my life would be changed.
I’d be a man not to be trusted.

THE LimE RED BAG

a prying man, a man literally
with gimlet eyes.

Mountain crags jutted
through the clouds. We Were
in the range north of the city.
Here and there were clear
spots and I could see roads be-
low, but there were also clouds
far above us. It was very beau-
tiful, but it was also very
bumpy, and we started to slip
and slide.

To my horror I found that
the balance wheel was rocking
again. Closing my eyes and
gritting my teeth, I forced my
senses to the wheel, tugging
and pulling and shoving and
pushing until it finally stop-
ped.

A jab in the shoulder. I
jumped, startled.

“Your cup,” my seat part-
ner said, pointing.

I looked down at the coffee
cup I had crushed in my
hands. Then I looked up into
the eyes of the stewardess. I
handed it to her. She took it
without a word and went
away.

“Were you really asleep that
time ?”

“Not really,” I said. I was
tempted to tell the woman
I was subject to fits, but I
didn’t.

It was only a few minutes to
landing, but they became the
longest minutes of my life as
time after time I stopped the
rocking wheel when the plane
dipped and bumped to a land-
ing.

Leaving the apron with the
56

other passengers, I tried to
walk as unconcernedly as they
through the exit gate. I would
have liked walking through
the terminal and out the en-
trance and away, but I could
not. I had my suitcase to get,
for one thing. The damned
bomb was the other. So I
strolled out into the concourse
again to look at the plane and
watch the baggagemen at
work, transferring the lug-
gage to two airfield carts.
They weren’t as careful as I
would have been.

It was impossible to tell
from this distance just which
bag contained the bomb; I
could hardly identify my own
scarred suitcase. The assort-
ment of bags — a strange con-
glomeration of sizes and colors
— was packed in some places
six deep, and it rolled toward
the gate where I was standing.
I didn’t know whether to stay
or run, imagining the balance
wheel now happily rocking
again. The load went past me
down a ramp to the front of
the air terminal where the
luggage was unloaded and
placed in a long rack. I went
with it.

There was a flurry of ticket
matching, hands grabbing for
suitcases, and a general ex-
odus on the part of my fellow
passengers, too fast to deter-
mine who had got the one with
the bomb. Now all that was
left was the attendant and I
had two bags — my own batter-
ed veteran of years, and a fine

JERRY SOHL

new red overnight case, small
enough to be the one.

I lit a cigarette, reached out.
Inside were a woman’s things
and — a clock. The escapement
was clicking vigorously.

I didn’t moan this time. I
just closed my eyes, stretched
toward and grabbed the bal-
ance wheel I was getting to
know like my own. I entered
into a union with it so strong
that after I had reduced it to
immobility, it was like waking
when I opened my eyes.

The baggage claim attend-
ant was staring at me. For
only a moment I stared back.
Then I quickly reached for my
baggage check and presented
it to him. His hand hovered
over the handle of the little
red bag and I was ready to
yell at him. But then, match-
ing numbers on the tags with
his eyes, his hand grasped the
handle of my own suitcase and
pushed it toward me.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it.
I glanced ever so casually to-
ward the remaining bag. “One
left over, eh?”

“Yeah.” He was so bored I
was tempted to tell him what
was in it. But he was eying
me with a “well-why-don’t-
you-get-along?” look.

I said, “What happens if
nobody claims it?”

“Take it inside. Why?”

He was getting too curious.
“Oh, I just wondered, that’s
all.”

I stepped on my cigarette
THE LIHLE RED BAG

and walked toward the air ter-
minal entrance and put my
suitcase on the stone steps
there. A redcap came hurrying
over.

“Cab?”

I shook my head. “Just wait-
ing.”

Just waiting for somebody
to pick up a bomb.

I lit another cigarette and
glanced now and then toward
the baggage claim area. The
red bag was still there. All
sorts of theories ran through
my head as to why it should
still be there, and none satis-
fied me.

I should not have been
there, that much I knew; I
should be with a man named
Amos Magaffey on Sixth
Street at ten o’clock, discuss-
ing something very mundane,
the matter of a printing order.
But what could I do? If I left
the airport, the attendant
would eventually take the bag
inside and there would be an
explosion, and I wouldn’t be
able to live with myself.

No. I had to stay to keep the
balance wheel stationary until
— until what?

A man in tan gabardine,
wearing a police cap and
badge, walked out of the en-
trance to stand on the stone
steps beside me while he put
on a pair of dark glasses. A
member of the airport police
detail. I could tell him. I could
take him down to the little red
bag and explain the whole
thing. Then it would be his

baby and I would be off on my
own business.

But he moved on down the
steps, nodded at the redcap,
and started across the street
to the parking area. I could
have called to him, “Hey, offi-
cer, let me tell you about a
bomb in a little red bag.” But
I didn’t. I didn’t because I
caught a movement at the bag-
gage claim counter out of the
side of my eye.

The attendant had picked up
the bag and was walking with
it up the ramp to the rear of
the air terminal. Picking up
my own suitcase, I went inside
in time to see him enter
through a side door and de-
posit the bag on the scales at
the airline desk and say some-
thing to the clerk. The clerk
nodded and moved the bag to
the rear room.

I could visualize the balance
wheel once again rocking like
crazy. How many minutes —
or seconds — were left? I was
sweating when I moved to the
counter, and it wasn’t because
of the sunshine I’d been soak-
ing in. I had to get as close to
the bag as I could if I was go-
ing to stop the clock again.

“Can I help you?” the clerk
asked.

“No. I’m waiting for some-
one.”

I turned my back to him,
put down my suitcase, leaned
against the counter and reach-
ed out for the wheel. I found I
could reach the device, but it
was far away. When I tried to

dampen it, the wheel escaped
my grasp.

“Do you have my suitcase?”

I blinked my eyes open and
looked around. The blonde in
the plane stood there looking
very fresh and bright and un-
concerned. In her right hand
she had a green baggage claim
check.

The clerk took it, nodded,
and in a moment brought out
the overnight case and set it
on the scales. The girl thanked
him, picked it up, glanced at
me indiffei’ently, and then
started for the entrance with
it.

“Just a moment,” I found
myself saying, grabbing my
bag and hurrying after her.

At her side and a little
ahead of her, I said, “Lis-
ten to me.”

She looked annoyed and in-
creased her stride toward the
door.

“It’s a matter of life or
death,” I said. I wanted to
wrest the bag from her and
hurl it out through the door-
way into the street, but I re-
strained myself.

She stopped and stared. I
noticed a short, fat man in a
rumpled suitcoat and unpress-
ed pants staring, too. Ignoring
him, I said, “Please put the
bag down. Over there.” I indi-
cated a spot beside a telephone
booth where it would be out of
the way.

She didn’t move. She just
said, “Why?”

JERRY SOHL

“For God’s sake !’’ I took the
case. She offered no resistance.

I put her bag and mine next to
the booth. When I turned
around she was standing there
looking at me as if I had gone
out of my mind. Her eyes were
blue and brown-flecked, very
pretty eyes, and my thought at
the moment was. I’m glad the
bomb didn’t go off ; these eyes
wouldn’t be looking at me or
anything else right now if it
had.

“I’ve got to talk to you. It’s
very important.”

The girl said, “Why?” I was
beginning to think it was the
only word she knew. At the
same time I was wondering
why anyone would want to kill
someone so lovely.

“I’ll explain in a moment.
Please stand right here while
I make a telephone call.” I
moved toward the phone
booth, paused and said, “And
don’t ask me why.”

She gave me a speculative
look.

I must not have seemed
a complete idiot because she
said, “All right, but — ”

I didn’t listen for the rest. I
went into the booth, closed the
door, pretended to drop a coin
and dial a number. But all the
time I was in there, I was
reaching out through the glass
for the clock. At this range it
wasn’t difficult to stop the bal-
ance wheel.

Just the same, when I came
out I was wringing wet.

“Now will you please tell me

what this is all about?” she
said stiffly.

“Gladly. Let me buy you a
cup of coffee and I’ll explain.”

She glanced at the bags. I
told her they’d be all right. We
followed the short, fat man
into the coffee shop.

Over coffee I explained it all
to her, how I had this extra-
sensory ability, how she was
the first person I had ever re-
vealed it to, and how I had dis-
covered what was in her over-
night bag.

During the telling, her un-
touched coffee grew a skin,
her face grew pale, her eyes
grew less curious and more
troubled. There were tears
there when I finished. I asked
her who put the bomb in her
bag.

“Joe did,” she said in a tone-
less voice, not looking at me
any more but staring vacantly
across the room. “Joe put it
there.” Behind her eyes she
was reliving some recent
scene.

“Who is Joe?”

“My husband.” I thought
she was going to really bawl,
but she got control again.
“This trip was his idea, my
coming down here to visit my
sister.” Her smile was bleak.
“I see now why he wanted to
put in those books. I’d finished
packing and was in the bath-
room. He said he’d put in some
books we’d both finished read-
ing— for my sister. That’s
when he must have put the —
put it in there.”

THE LintE RED BAG

I said gently, “Why would
he want to do a thing like
that?”

“I don’t know.” She shook
her head. “I just don’t know.”
And she was close to bawling
again. Then she recovered and
said, “I’m not sure I want to
know.” I admired her for say-
ing it. Joe must have been
crazy.

“It’s all right now?” she
asked.

I nodded. “A long as we
don’t move it.”

I told her I didn’t know how
much more time there was,
that I’d been thinking it over
and that the only way out
seemed to be to tell the airport
policeman. After I explained
it to her, the girl — she said
her name was Julia Claremont
— ^agreed to tell him she
thought there was a bomb in
her bag, that she had noticed a
ticking and had become wor-
ried because she knew she
hadn’t packed a clock. It
wasn’t good, but it would have
to do.

“We’ve got to get it deac-
tivated,” I said, watching the
fat man pay for his coffee and
leave. “The sooner the better.”

I FINISHED my coffee in
one gulp and went to pay
the bill with her. I asked her
why she didn’t claim the bag
at the same time the other
people had. She said she had
called her sister and the phone
was busy for a long while.
“She was supposed to meet

me, and when she wasn’t here,
I got worried. She said she
isn’t feeling well and asked me
to take a cab.” She smiled a
little. It was a bright, cheery
thing. I had the feeling it was
all for me. “That’s where I
was going when you caught up
with me.”

It had become a very nice
day. But the bottom dropped
out of it again when we reach-
ed the lobby.

The two bags weren’t there.

I ran to the entrance and
nearly collided with the red-
cap.

“See anybody go out of here
with a little red bag and an old
battered suitcase?”

“Bag? Suitcase?” he mum-
bled. Then he became excited.
“Why, a man just stepped out
of here — ” He turned to look
down the street. “That’s him.”

The dumpy man I’d seen
was walking off; Julia’s bag
in his right hand, mine in his
left. He seemed in no hurry.

“Hey!” I shouted, starting
toward him.

The man turned, took one
look at me, and started to run.
He came abreast an old gray,
mud-spattered coupe, ran
around, opened the door and
threw both bags into the rear
seat as he got in.

The car was a hundred feet
away and gathering speed by
the time I reached where it
had been parked, I watched it
for a moment, then walked
back to the entranceway
where Julia was standing with

JERRY SOHL

the redcap, who said, “That the driver. That was all right,
man steal them suitcases?” I didn’t want to see him. I
“That he did,” I said, didn’t know what Julia was

Just then the airport police- thinking,
man started across the street She said, “About those
from the parking lot. Redcap bags,” and looked at me.

said, “Better tell him about The officer said, “Yes,

it,” miss?”

The policeman was sympa- “I — I don’t care about mine,

thetic and concerned. He said, I didn’t have much of any-
“We’d better get over to the thing in it.”
office.” “I feel the same way,” I

But we never left the spot said. “Would it be all right if
because an explosion some we didn’t bother to report it?”
blocks distant shattered the “Well,” the policeman said,
air. Julia’s hand grasped my “I can’t make you report it.”
arm. Hard. “I’d rather not then,” Julia

“Jets,” the redcap said, ey- said. She turned to me. “I’d
ing the sky. like some air. Can’t we walk a

“I don’t know,” the police- little?”
man said. “Didn’t sound much “Sure,” I said,
like a jet to me.” We started down the street,

We stood there, I could visu- her arm in mine, as the air

alize the wreckage of an old began to fill with the distant

gray coupe in the middle of a sounds of sirens,
sti’eet, but I couldn’t visualize END

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They went somewhere and something happened to

Hunched tensely over the
foot of the bed, Bradford
Sanderson stared down at the
unconscious sergeant. There
was a heavy stillness in the
hospital room. Outside, beyond

was to go there

the window, the sun-splashed
expanse of the Army medical
base stretched away toward
the glaring beach and the
shimmering Gulf waters be-
yond.

Last Leap

By DANIEL F. GALOUYE

them — and the one way to find out where and what

and let it happen!

The door opened and closed
softly, admitting a lean and
erect Medical Corps colonel.

“Has he come around yet,
Doctor?” he asked in an un-
easy whisper.

Dr. Sanderson shook his
head. “No, but he’s sleeping
lightly. He’ll be awake in a
minute.”

“Think you’ll do any better
with this one?” The colonel’s

voice sharpened to an appre-
hensive edge.

“I intend to take all precau-
tions, Dr. Vickers. I don’t
think we’ll lose McNaught.”

“God, I hope not,” Vickers
said, relieved only a little.
“We’ve already got the Bu-
reau breathing down our
necks over the first two — ah
— accidents.”

“I’m sure we have nothing
to fear this time,” said San-
derson.

For his forty-eight years
and despite the flecks of gray
in his hair, there was a pre-
served air of youthfulness
about the physicist. Stocky
and in obvious good trim, ho
presented an appearance that
belied his professional status.

The door opened and closed
again, as softly as before, and
a woman whose dense black
hair contrasted her Army
nurse’s uniform came and
stood between the two men.
Slightly built and attractive,
she fixed the slumbering ser-
geant with an anxious stare.

Vickers glanced at the hypo-
dermic syringe in her hand.
“Sodium pentothal. Miss Con-
ner ly?”

She nodded without looking
at him. “Two hundred cc.”

Drawing in a deep breath,
the sergeant rolled over and
buried his head luxuriously in
the pillow. The movement,
however, did little to dishevel
his bristly blond hair. His eyes
flicked open and he stared ab-
stractedly at the others. Then

he smiled and his lips parted
to form a word.

“Easy now!” Sanderson
cautioned. “Don’t think about
anything! Just keep your
mind blank!”

All expression drained
from the sergeant’s face.
His naturally ruddy features
blanched imperceptibly, as
though he had remembered
something of appalling con-
sequences.

Colonel Vickers and Miss
Connerly moved precautiously
away from the bed.

“Did it take?” McNaught
asked, sitting up.

“That’s what we’re going to
find out now,” Sanderson re-
plied. “And that’s all we’re
going to find out.”

Exploring the floor, Mc-
Naught’s feet found and
squirmed into his slippers.
Then he rose, straightened his
pajama blouse and reached for
his robe. He was a tall, well-
proportioned man and his ex-
cessive size was evident in the
skimpy fit of the hospital gar-
ments.

“Take it slow,” Sanderson
soothed again, backing off be-
fore the sergeant. “Just do as
we say — nothing else.”

McNaught tightened the
robe sash and offered a smile
that was intended to be reas-
suring. “If you’re thinking
about Watterman and Fish-
er,” he said lightly, “they’ll be
back. They just took French
leave and — ”

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

“Blank, Sergeant !” San-
derson cut in. “We don’t want
you thinking of anything that
might make you pop away im-
pulsively. Now — are you all
set?”

Miss Connerly strained for-
ward, her intense gray eyes
vigilant with restrained ap-
prehension.

Vickers glanced uncertainly
behind him and eased back.

Sanderson stepped to one
side, as though it might be
necessary to get out of the ser-
geant’s way. “The opposite
comer of the room — and
that’s all,” he directed.
“Ready Go!”

Instantly there was a double
thunderclap of minor inten-
sity— like two distant jets
slipping through the sound
barrier — as McNaught disap-
peared from where he was
standing and reappeared sim-
ultaneously in the designated
corner.

The sergeant turned and
faced Sanderson triumphant-
ly. “It works!”

But the physicist sprang
across the room, signaling for
Miss Connerly at the same
time.

“Let him have the injec-
tion!” he told the nurse.
“Easy, son. Everything’s go-
ing to be all right. Just don’t
think! Dr. Vickers, help me
bring him back across the
room.”

The injection took effect al-
most immediately and it re-
quired the efforts of both men

to get McNaught comfortably
positioned in bed.

Sanderson shook his head
briskly, trying to clear the
ringing in his ears. And he
wondered whether he would
ever get used to the unexpect-
ed explosions that resulted as
air rushed into the suddenly
vacated space and was abrupt-
ly expelled from the newly
occupied one.

Later that evening, Vick-
' ers paced nervously in
Sanderson’s office while San-
derson chronicled the day’s
incidents in his official record
book.

Unsettled by the colonel’s
restlessness, he paused and
looked up irately. “I wouldn’t
worry too much about Mc-
Naught. He’s going to do all
right.”

“That’s what you said about
Watterman and Fisher.”

“But the sergeant has good
control. He knows the mean-
ing of the word restraint.”
Vickers cast him an uncon-
vinced glance and continued
pacing. “That’s the way it was
with Watterman and Fisher —
at first. They went slow. They
had a lot of respect for tele-
portation— until they started
throwing caution to the wind
and went popping all over the
place.”

Sanderson rose, packing his
pipe bowl with a crooked
thumb. “McNaught’s fore-
warned by the disappearances
of the first two subjects. You

THE LAST LEAP

can be sure he’s going to be
damned careful.”

Vickers leaned backward
against the desk and folded his
arms, while the physicist lit
his pipe and raised a thick
white cloud of fragrant smoke
between them.

“What do you suppose hap-
pened to Watterman and Fish-
er?” the colonel asked grimly.

“That’s what McNaught is
going to help us find out.”

“Collision with something
solid?”

Sanderson shook his head.
“You don’t pass through any-
thing en route from one place
to another.”

“I mean in the remateriali-
zation. Maybe Watterman and
Fisher popped up in a space
that was already occupied.”

“Impossible. Watterman
cleared that for us months
ago. He proved rematerializa-
tion can take place only in
gaseous spaces or attenuated
liquids. He even tried to reap-
pear within a brick wall. The
best he could do was to pop out
next to it.”

Still, Vickers was not molli-
fied. His thin, rough hands ri-
gidly gripped the edge of the
desk behind him as he stood
there with one leg crossed
over the other. He shook his
bowed head regretfully and
the light from the cortical ex-
citation laboratory in the next
room sent glistening high-
lights dancing across his slick
scalp. '

“Maybe they popped off to a

polar region and froze to
death,” he speculated sourly.

“That; too, is highly unlike-
ly. There’s a lot of reflex
action involved. Waterman,
after his second excitation, did
go to the Arctic, you’ll remem-
ber. He was only there about
three seconds — long enough
for the cold to begin s^ping
in — before he found himself
back in his room. Fisher even
tried a surge into space, with-
out any injury at all. His re-
action to a vacuum was so
spontaneous that I don’t im-
agine he spent more than a
hundredth of a second out
there.”

Nodding absently, Vickers
lighted a cigarette with un-
steady hands while Sanderson
returned to his record book.
But the physicist only sat
there staring thoughtfully
through the surface of the
desk, pen poised over the lined
paper.

WATTERMAN had gone
first. There had been his
initial reaction to cortical ex-
citation — uncertainty, per-
haps even a tinge of fear. His
leaps during the first day
were executed with a gingerly
reluctance. By the second day,
however, he had overcome all
his qualms. And before the
stimulated frontal region of
his brain had returned to nor-
mal at the end of the third
day, he had materialized in
four different sections of the
country.

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

It was after his second ex-
posure to the multiple-fre-
quency stimulus a month later,
however, that he had lost him-
self in an orgy of teleportive
experiences, cropping up in so
many places throughout the
country and abroad that the
story had to be released.

Only then did the public be-
come aware that, under direct
subsidy of the Bureau of Re-
search, Bradford Sanderson's
previous experiments in ex-
citing telepathy had been in-
geniously expanded to include
teleportive ability. It was
Watterman's materialization
at the United States Moon
Base, the physicist recalled,
that had forced the Bureau to
release the findings of the ex-
periment in order to avert
panic.

The next day — that was five
months ago, Sanderson recall-
ed as he pulled pensively on
his pipe — Watterman had dis-
appeared, literally, complete-
ly, permanently. He had left
behind only a vacuous tran-
quility in the hospital room,
ruffled solely by rustling cur-
tains that quietly altered the
pattern of sunlight on the floor
as they swayed with the Gulf
breeze.

With Fisher, it had been
different. Sanderson had ques-
tioned his selection as a volun-
teer. Thin and fidgety, he had
definitely turned out to be the
excitable type. And exposure
to the catalytic frequencies
had only heightened his ner-

vousness to the extent that
before he disappeared he had
even shown psychotic ten-
dencies.

His teleportive leaps had
been few indeed and were exe-
cuted only after inordinate
coaxing. Only once during his
entire phase had he shown any
initiative. That was on his
jump into empty space. But
even afterward — until he had
vanished permanently from
under a shade umbrella on the
beach several hours later — ^he
had disclaimed any intent in
the feat. Rather, he had in-
sisted that it was the result of
an “auto-suggestive impulse.”

With McNaught, though, it
would be different, Sanderson
promised himself. The ser-
geant was as perfectly balanc-
ed, mentally, as any person
he had ever known.

'T wonder,” Vickers said,
stubbing out his cigarette in
the ash tray, “whether Wat-
terman and Fisher will ever
be heard from again.”

“I like to think they will.”
Sanderson cupped his hands
around the warmth of his pipe
bowl. “I tell myself that in
both cases, and perhaps coin-
cidentally, they were stranded
in remote areas just as the ef-
fects of the stimulative fre-
quencies wore off.”

“That could have been the
case with Watterman,” the
colonel admitted. “He disap-
peared toward the end of his
second three-day period. But
Fisher was in phase less than

THE LAST LEAP

a day and a half when it hap-
pened to him.”

“Maybe the stimulation
wasn’t as strong in Fisher’s
case.”

“Maybe,” said Sanderson.

Vickers turned to leave, but
paused near the door. “By the
way, the Under Secretary of
Research is due in tomorrow
morning.”

“Peabody? What does he
want?”

“Mainly to keep abreast of
what’s going on. If we lose
McNaught, he probably has
orders to put his foot down on
your work.”

“That’s bad. I didn’t want
any interference during the
sergeant’s three-day phase. As
a matter of fact, I’d planned
to have him spend most of to-
morrow on the beach. That’ll
help keep his mind occupied.”

Vickers shrugged. “You’ll
have to see Peabody first.”

UNDER SECRETARY of
Research Sylvester A.
Peabody was impressive both
in size and proclivity to impo-
sition. The adjectives “Wash-
ington” and “bureaucratic”
were stamped all over him — in
the intolerant set of his jaw,
the disdainful sharpness of his
eyes, his mannerism of wield-
ing an otherwise nonfunc-
tional pair of glasses to stress
a point.

He had taken possession of
Sanderson’s desk by the next
morning and, for the better
part of an hour, had thumbed

through the day-by-day chro-
nology on all the experimental
work.

He looked up abruptly. “So
now it’s Number Three?”

Annoyed over the loss of
time, Sanderson said nothing.

“And what makes you think
we’ll fare any better with this
new subject?” Peabody asked.

“For one thing, I altered
three of the basic frequen-
cies,” the physicist explained
wearily. “There may be a cor-
relation between some of the
ultra-wave forms and the feel-
ing of a compulsion to tele-
port.”

The undersecretary rose
and thumped his knuckles
with the spectacles. “As I un-
derstand it, both Fisher and
Watterman said that at times
they felt this almost uncon-
trollable impulse to — as you
say — ^make a leap.”

Sanderson nodded. “Watter-
man found himself jumping
on several occasions when he
merely thought about another
location.”

“And you believe you’ve
corrected this rashness in
McNaught?”

“Sergeant McNaught went
through extensive ti*aining
and thorough conditioning for
two months before exposure.
I consider him well insulated
against any whimsical use of
his ability.”

Peabody struck a pose of
thoughtfulness as he stared
out the window.

Impatiently, Sanderson

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

checked his watch. It was al-
most noon and he had thus far
managed to spend only two
hours with the new subject.
But it had been a most re-
warding two hours. Mc-
Naught had executed over a
dozen controlled leaps, two of
them covering distances of
better than a mile. And if the
sergeant had felt any inner
elation over the experiences,
he had not shown it. Exhibit-
ing only a purely impersonal
approach to the manifestation,
he hadn’t taken a single impul-
sive leap.

But if Sanderson was going
to continue with his planned
program of sensible indoctri-
nation for McNaught, he re-
alized, he would have to break
away from Peabody soon. For
nearly a third of the ser-
geant’s three-day phase had
already been used up and as
yet he had been subjected to
nothing but a false, laboratory
environment.

The undersecretary turned
and spoke with a precise,
meaningful inflection. “If you
lose this third subject, San-
derson, your project is going
to be indefinitely abandoned.’’

“McNaught’s secure.”

“As I understood it, so were
the first two.”

“You’ll have to admit that
it’s possible they may have
simply taken French leave —
Watterman because he was
naturally frivolous and Fisher
because he was afi’aid.”

“That’s just the point!”

Peabody banged the desk. “Do
you realize that for months
now security has been sweat-
ing? Don’t you see what it
would mean if the details of
your work fell into hostile
hands?”

“It can’t happen. Wherever
they go, the subjects take no
knowledge of the process with
them.”

Sanderson didn’t man-
age to get away with Ser-
geant McNaught and Miss
Connerly until almost three
that afternoon. But that was
just as well, he conceded as he
helped unpack the chairs, um-
brella, lunch basket and bra-
zier at the beach. The hottest
part of the day was behind
them now and cool offshore
breezes were beginning to
moderate the tepid glare of
white sand and glistening
water.

Eventually, the physicist
settled down in one of the
chairs, fished in his pockets
for his pipe, and began plan-
ning a series of more ambi-
tious leaps for the sergeant
to perform later that after-
noon.

McNaught shed his polo
shirt and helped the nurse off
with her beach robe.

“Come on, Kate,” he chal-
lenged. “I’ll race you to the
water.”

Sanderson watched the cou-
ple sprint away while the sun
played softly against their
lithe forms. But several yards

THE LAST LEAP

from the water McNaught
swerved to spare the architec-
tural integrity of a deserted
sand castle, lost his balance
and toppled. Miss Connerly,
unmindful of the sergeant’s
mishap, raced on, splashing
through the shallow water and
plunging headlong into a
fi'othy breaker.

At once there was a muf-
fled double explosion as Mc-
Naught vanished from where
he had sprawled on the sand
and rematerialized in the wa-
ter beside the girl. And, ac-
commodating his impetuous
entry, the water shot outward
and upward in a geyserlike
spray.

Sanderson bolted from his
chair and raced across the
beach. Scarcely aware that he
was in water above his shoes,
he cupped his hands and
shouted, “I didn’t tell you to
leap!”

“I didn’t either.” McNaught
displayed a confused frown.
‘‘It just sort of — happened.”

Sanderson stiffened. Was
this a first indication of capri-
cious reaction? Was Mc-
Naught losing his detached
calmness? Was he headed the
same way as Watterman and
Fisher ?

‘‘You’d better come on in,”
Sanderson said.

“I’m sure he’ll be all right.
Dr. Sanderson,” the nurse in-
terceded. “It wouldn’t have
happened if I hadn’t encour-
aged that spurt of exertion.”

Perhaps she was right, the

physicist granted hopefully.
After all, reaction could only
be expected to become reflex-
ive to a certain degree during
physical activity.

Still, he went back to the
station wagon, opened the
glove compartment, took out
the hypodermic syringe case
and put it in his hip pocket.

Early that evening, while
Sanderson was fanning
the coals in the brazier, Mc-
Naught and Miss Connerly
returned from a twilight walk
along the beach.

They stood on the other
side of the fire for a long
while, letting the lambent
glow cast a mantle of ruddi-
ness across their features.

“I think we’re making ex-
cellent headway,” the physi-
cist enthused, spearing three
wieners with a fork and sub-
jecting them to the heat of the
coals. “I particularly like the
way you’re showing restraint.
By this time Watterman was
hopping all over the country.”
With satisfaction, he
thought back over the experi-
ments he had put McNaught
through late that afternoon.
He had negotiated leaps to the
island, to a point several miles
down the beach and to Colonel
Vickers’ office and back. And,
unlike the first two subjects,
the sergeant had still shown
no further tendency toward
impulsive teleportation.

Sanderson looked hastily
over at the couple, realizing

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

only then that there was a
tense' silence between them.
And now he saw that their
faces were strained with un-
certain expressions.

“It — ^happened again,” the
girl said awkwardly.

Sanderson let the wieners
drop to the sand. “Another
involuntary hop? Where to
this time?”

“I just couldn’t help it,”
McNaught apologized. “I was
thinking about home — on the
West Coast. We’ve got a beach
just like this. And suddenly
I was standing on it. I would
not even have known the dif-
ference if it hadn’t been for
the fact that the sun was still
shining over there.”

“That settles it!” the physi-
cist exclaimed. “Let’s get him
back to the base, Kate. He’s
going to sit out the I'est of his
phase with a few hundred cc
of pentothal!”

McNaught gripped Sander-
son’s sleeve. “I’ll be all right.
Let me stick it out — for a few
more hours, at least.”

“I think Dr. Sanderson is
right,” the girl said. “It’s best
to play it safe.” She went over
to retrieve her robe.

McNaught, however, only
stood staring down at the
glowing coals. A large moth
buzzed against his face, but
even that failed to snap him
from his thoughts. Sanderson
reached out and took him ur-
gently by the arm.

But the sergeant pulled
free, brushing the insect away

THE UST LEAP

at the same time. “No, waitl
I think—”

He paused and his eyes were
vivid with sudden apprehen-
sion. “I think I know what
happened to Watterman and
Fisher!”

The physicist laced him
with a questioning stare.

McNaught lurched back.
“No!” he shouted. “Don’t ask
me! I can’t talk about it!”

Sanderson lunged for him.
But he vanished, reappeared
a few feet away, moonlight
glistening on his trembling
shoulders.

Kate raced toward him and
he disappeared again, materi-
alizing this time close to the
physicist. And Sanderson was
ready with the hypodermic.

The next morning the phys-
icist’s dra'wn face showed
the effects of a sleepless night
as he called down for coffee
and shaved in the lavatory ad-
joining his office.

When he went back to his
desk, Vickers was in the room,
looking haggard and nervous.
The colonel’s tie was askew,
and around his bald crown, his
peripheral fringe of hair was
ragged, like the leaves of a
Roman chaplet.

He dropped into a chair op-
posite the desk. “At least I got
rid of Peabody. He’s gone back
to Washington.”

Sanderson tensed. “You tell
him what happened ?”

“Of course not. I simply ex-
plained that we cut the experi-

ment short to evaluate what
we’ve observed thus far.”

The physicist thrust his
hands in his pockets and went
to the window, looked out
blindly, turned and came back,
“I don’t understand it. I can’t
imagine what unnerved Mc-
Naught so completely last
night.”

“You should have pressed
him for an explanation.”
“No,” Sanderson disagreed.
“I think that might have been
disastrous. When he material-
ized next to me — Klon’t you
see? — he must have wanted
that injection.”

Vickers spread his hands.
“What do we do now?”

“Keep him under sedation
until the effects of the fre-
quency exposure wear off. We
only have a little more than
a day to sit it out. Then I’m
going to re-examine every
inch of theory.”

He went over to his desk,
opened the record book and
wrote four or five lines. Then
he looked up as Miss Connerly
entered with the coffee he had
requested.

“I’m glad you’re here,
Kate,” he said, relieved.
“When did you give Mc-
Naught that last injection? It
was three o’clock, wasn’t it?”
Pen poised over the next
blank line, he waited for her
answer. When he looked up
finally, he saw only dismay on
her face.

“I thought — ” she began.
“Didn’t you say — I mean, you

told me just after midnight
that the other nurse would
take care of it, didn’t you?”
Sanderson sprang up. “I
said she would prepare it ! She
went off duty at two-thirty!”
Lunging for the door, he
brush^ against her, jolted the
tray and sent coffee sloshing
over the brims of the two
cups. Vickers stayed close at
his heels all the way down the
corridor.

McNaught’s room was emp-
ty.

The top sheet on his bed had
been carelessly thrown back.
An overturned glass of water,
its puddle still dripping off the
edge of the night table’s sur-
face, suggested that he had
only recently awakened. His
robe was gone, as was one of
his slippers. Sole up, the other
lay halfway between the bed
and the reading table.

Sunlight splotched the sin-
gle sheet of writing paper on
the table. With an unsteady
hand, Sanderson picked up the
scrawled note :

How can I warn anybody
without even thinking about
it? The urge to teleport can
sneak up on you. It can also
be an oveipowering compul-
sion. But how can I teU you ?
How can 1 keep myself from
thinking about something,
and at the same time write
about what it is I’m not sup-
posed to think about? I
know what happened to
Watterman and Fisher.
They wen

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

The writing ended abruptly,
as though the pen had been
snatched cleanly up and away
from the paper.

IT WAS almost midnight
that same day when Vick-
ers, having searched Sander-
son’s quarters and the hospital
for the physicist, tried the
laboratory on the strength of
a hunch.

In the doorway, the whining
surge of energy in the excita-
tion circuits drew a startled
breath from the colonel. He
plunged on into the room, rac-
ing past the restless genera-
tors, past the towering banks
of rectifiers and oscillators,
past the ultra-frequency con-
verters.

“You fool!” he shouted as
he covered the remaining dis-
tance to the excitation chair
and began snatching elec-
trodes from the band that cir-
cled Sanderson’s forehead.

He knocked aside the final
three glowing parabolic reflec-
tors. “You damned silly fool!
What are you trying to do?”
Sanderson felt no immedi-
ate effects from the exposure,
despite the fact that there had
been no anesthetic.

“It had to be done,” he said
evenly.

“Why? So you could go the
same way Watterman and
Fisher and McNaught went?”
“I’ve got to know what hap-
pened to them.”

“It doesn’t make any differ-
ence now.” Vickers appeared

to be growing even more per-
turbed. “The Bureau’s going
to shut down the project any-
way!”

Sanderson rose and passed
a hand over his forehead, fin-
gering the impression left by
the electrode band. “That’s
just it. They’ll shut us down
and we’ll never know what
became of McNaught and the
others.”

“What do you expect to
do?”

“The same things they did,
I guess,” the physicist said,
shrugging. “I don’t suppose
I’ll have any trouble duplicat-
ing their final experience.”

He stared at a cleared space
in the opposite corner of the
laboratory. And even before
he could completely summon
the intent to leap, he found
himself at once on the other
side of the room.

Aghast, Vickers raced after
him. “Sanderson — don’t! You
aren’t even conditioned
against impulsive jumps!”

“That’s the way I want it,”
the physicist said impassively.
“All the preparations we went
through with McNaught did
no good. He still hopped —
three times that we know of.
So maybe I don’t care about
self-restraint.”

He leaped again, this time
popping up in the doorway to
his office.

Hands spread in a suppli-
cating gesture. Colonel Vick-
ers followed. “Watterman was
not interested in restraining

THE LAST LEAP

himself. He leaped as much as
he wanted. And he finally van-
ished too.”

“I don’t give a hang if I do
disappear.” Sanderson turned
away. “I’m going to find out
where those others went. And
the only way to do it is to take
the same course they took and
see what happens.”

He flicked out of sight and
ended the leap in the corridor
outside his office.

«^ANDERSON!” The colo-
nel’s voice came excitedly
from within the room. Then
the door swung open and
Vickers burst into the hall.
"Call this crazy thing off!
Look, I have an idea. In tele-
porting from one place to an-
other, you have to go through
something, even though it
seems instantaneous. Through
some other plane of existence,
perhaps. And maybe when you
don’t come back — ^when the
others didn’t come back — it
was because they got stuck in
between!”

Sanderson turned his back.
Immediately the corridor was
erased from his vision, only to
be replaced in the next instant
by the ponderous railing of a
concrete bridge and, beyond,
a river whose dark waters
sent wisps of mist into the
chill air. On his left, the
bridge abutment clung to the
shore of the lie de la Cite and,
farther in the distance, the
Cathedral of Notre Dame’s
great, slender spire rose

against the pink-gray dawn
sky.

A startled Parisian, wit-
nessing the materialization,
shouted a fervent “Mon
Dieu!” and promptly got his
foot caught in the spokes of
his bicycle catapulting over
the handle bars.

At once Sanderson was back
in the hallway with Vickers,
who was shouting for Miss
Connerly.

The colonel lunged for him
but missed as Sanderson tele-
ported to a new position be-
hind him.

"For God’s sake!” Vickers
shouted. “Stop it — ^just for a
minute, anyway! I have an-
other theory. What if the pro-
tective reflex doesn’t always
work? Maybe Fisher was just
lucky when he was able to leap
out of space immediately !
Suppose he returned to space
later — and panicked before he
remembered he could jump
back to safety!”

A sudden assault of violent
suction and intense cold
sprang in on Sanderson, as
though he had been snatched
up in a giant’s hand. In a
shutterlike glimpse, he was
fleetingly aware of a broad
sweep of blackness, spangled
with a myriad brilliant stars,
of a vast, shadowy surface
hundreds of miles below that
shone softly in the light of a
full moon.

In the next instant he was
standing on the beach not far
from the spot where he had

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

picnicked with McNaught and
Kate the day before. The same
moon sent its light down to
embrace him and he stood
there in silent concentration.

The last leap, he realized,
had not been voluntary. Vick-
ers had merely spoken about
space and, on the strength of
that suggestion, Sanderson
had unintentionally duplicated
Fisher's experience.

So it had been spontaneous.
So what? Maybe that was
where they had made their
mistake all along — in thinking
that impulsive teleportation
must be rigorously avoided.
Maybe he should let himself
go completely — leap whenever
and as often as he could, with
or without his volition, wher-
ever his fancy led.

Complete surrender to the
impulse, wearing himself out
in wild over indulgence — that
might be the formula for es-
tablishing teleportation on a
totally conscious and control-
lable plane. If you filled a man
with food, it was only logical
that he would have no appe-
tite, wasn't it?

Abruptly he was back in the
hospital corridor. Only it was
empty now.

But not for long.

VICKERS darted out from
the room that Fisher had
occupied. ‘‘Miss Conn — "

He spied Sanderson,
paused, then came forward
cautiously. But the physicist
had already seen the hypoder-

mic syringe v/hich Vickers
was now trying to hide behind
his back.

There was a furtive sound
in the other direction and
Sanderson spun around. Kate
was closing in on him from the
rear with another hypoder-
mic.

But the visual impression
of the nurse was blotted out
and immediately replaced by
a blaze of lights that sparkled
against a background of glis-
tening wet buildings and drip-
ping sky. Then, in the fierce
glow of a lightning bolt. Times
Square stood out in eerie
white clarity. Hunched under
an umbrella, a man and wom-
an in formal dress brushed
past him and continued on
down a Broadway that was al-
most deserted in the thunder-
storm.

Leaping to New York, San-
derson assured himself, had
not been involuntary. This
time he had predetermined his
destination.

And in a quick follow-up to
establish the self-impelled na-
ture of his movements, he tele-
ported to the base of the
Washington Monument, not-
ing that there was no storm in
the nation's capital ; to Fisher-
man's Wharf in San Fran-
cisco, where the moon was
noticeably lower in the sky ; to
State Street in the Chicago
Loop, which he left as soon as
he felt the first cold drops of
rain.

Then suddenly he was back

THE LAST LEAP

in the quiet of Fisher’s room
in the hospital, only now be-
ginning to feel the first sensa-
tions of exuberance over his
far-ranging travels. But he
repressed it, remembering his
resolve to reject a sensation
of exhilaration. If he was to
learn what had happened to
Watterman, Fisher and Mc-
Naught, and return to tell
about it, his attitude would
have to be one of scientific
objectivity.

With a sudden rebirth of
determination, he set out
again — to a desolate polar ice
field, remaining there until the
severe cold pierced his cloth-
ing like dagger points of fire
— to the crest of the Koolau
Mountain Range on Oahu,
looking down first on sprawl-
ing Honolulu and then at the
sun sinking in the ocean be-
yond— to London, where he
stood at the base of Lord Nel-
son’s Column in Trafalgar
Square and watched the first
faint splashes of dawn appear
in the eastern sky — to a rug-
ged peak in the Rockies, from
which he enjoyed an enchant-
ing view of the artificial, geo-
metric brilliance of Denver.

Exhausted, finally, he let
himself return to the hospital
room and took one final leap
to the bed. He stretched him-
self across its tightly drawn
sheet and fell quickly asleep.

CERTAIN that it must have
been at least half an eter-
nity later, Sanderson finally

opened his eyes and turned his
face away from the bright
sunlight that was falling on
his pillow.

He reached over and rubbed
his arm, realizing at once that
it was sore from a number of
needle punctures over a con-
siderable period of time.

He had thrown himself
across the bed fully dressed,
but he was now in a hospital
gown and lay under the sheet.
Someone, perhaps as a result
of anxious waiting, had kept
the desk calendar up to date.
And he noted, as he had pre-
viously suspected, that it was
not the day after his exposure
to the ultra-frequency excita-
tion, but rather three days
later.

Still groggy, he reached
over to the night table and
poured himself a drink of wa-
ter. Then, trying to keep his
mind on immediate considera-
tions, he sat up.

Colonel Vickers strode
briskly into the room and
grinned when he saw Sander-
son awake. “It’s about time
you came around.”

“I suppose you think I
ought to thank you for pulling
the rug out from under me the
other night,” grumbled San-
derson.

Vickers shrugged. “Doesn't;
matter.”

“Suppose I’m not cured?”
Sanderson suggested warily.
“What if I decide to put my-
self through another excita-
tion treatment?”

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

“That doesn’t matter either
— ^what you decide, I mean.
Peabody’s been back. He or-
dered the laboratory appara-
tus dismantled.”

“And has it been ?” the
physicist asked.

Vickers nodded, giving no
indication that he had detected
the note of amusement in San-
derson’s voice.

He came over and gripped
Sanderson’s shoulder. “I know
you’re pretty wobbly, so take
it easy. Get up and around
whenever you think you’re up
to it. I’ll have a light breakfast
sent in as a starter.”

After the colonel had gone,
Sanderson allowed himself a
smug smile. It had all happen-
ed as he had planned. First the
exhausting workout during
his initial couple of hqurs of
teleporting. Then the long rest
with its total lack of mental
activity to allow time for him
to become psychically attuned
to the new ability without any
further chance of overdoing
it.

And now here he was — con-
scious and fresh and ready to
embark on the second stage of
his plan to learn what had
happened to the other three
subjects. He wondered how
long it would be before Vick-
ers found out he had given
himself a strong enough ex-
posure to the ultra-frequen-
cies to insure a six-day tele-
portive period instead of the
usual three.

But he was not ready for

any more leaps now. He want-
ed time to think — ^to evaluate
his experiences and attitude,
to compare them with those of
Watterman and Fisher and
McNaught. Then he would ap-
ply logic to the overall phe-
nomenon and see whether
some obscure explanation of
the disappearances wouldn’t
suggest itself.

Eventually, an orderly
brought in the breakfast tray
with its tomato juice, soft-
boiled eggs, toast and coffee,
and Sanderson dived vora-
ciously into the meal.

After he had finished, he
complimented himself on
the fact that he had not tele-
ported involuntarily since his
awakening. And this strength-
ened the hope that his theory
had been correct — that by al-
lowing himself free rein with
both deliberate and impulsive
teleportation, he had exhaust-
ed his inclination to uninten-
tional leaping.

He pushed the tray aside,
put on his robe and slippers
and walked over to the win-
dow. And he stood there star-
ing out through the brilliant
morning glare at the handful
of patients in deck chairs who
were drinking in the sunlight
on the convalescent porch.

McNaught, he remembered
quite clearly now, had solved
the enigma. But in trying to
get the warning across, he
had somehow only hastened
his final disappearance.

THE LAST LEAP

Abruptly Sanderson was
thinking back to the night be-
fore the sergeant had penned
his last frenzied words — to
the beach scene in which the
youth had practically gone
berserk and had begged not to
be pressed for his theory on
what had happened to Watter-
man and Fisher.

Something — something that
had occurred just before then,
or perhaps it was merely
something he had thought
about — ^must have inspired
the sergeant’s comprehension.

Sanderson reached desper-
ately into his memory of that
night, trying to recall in detail
what McNaught had said and
done. But it was almost as
though his mind were a blank.
He was trying too hard, he
supposed. And he longed for
a cigarette so he could relieve
his mind momentarily of the
self-ipflicted ordeal.

Instantly, he was standing
before the night table and
looking down at his pack of
cigarettes. And his hope and
confidence were immediately
shattered. He hadn’t, after all,
succeeded in quelling involun-
tary teleportation. He was no
better off, he sensed, than the
other three had been before
their disappearances.

He felt a persistent desper-
ation closing in on him. It was
quite possible, he realized
dismally, that he might soon
face the necessity of solving
the puzzle as the sole means of
saving himself.

The window of an automo-
bile, driving along the road in
front of the hospital, flashed
an intense reflection into the
room. Sanderson shielded his
eyes against the sudden burst
of light.

And abruptly he was think-
ing of McNaught again — on
the beach, bending over the
hot coals, insensitive to the
fluttering of a moth in his
face, finally becoming aware
of the insect and then curious-
ly following its swirling flight
around the brazier.

Sanderson fell back against
the bed, astonished and terri-
fied.

Good God ! It wasn’t — it
couldn't be —

Not that!

Even as his thoughts turned
entranced toward the concept,
he lashed them down with a
frantic surge of resistance.
He wouldn’t think about it!
The mere approach of the
idea to his consciousness
would mean the end. Yet he
knew that ultimately it would
be impossible to keep the hyp-
notically compelling thought
from his mind.

He forced his concentration
into another channel — to Mc-
Naught’s note that had hope-
lessly asked :

. . , How can I keep myself
from thinking about some-
thing and, at the same time,
write about what it is Vm
not supposed to think
about? , . .

DANIEL F. GALOUYE

There was only despair in
the realization that now he,
too, faced the same paradoxi-
cal predicament. Not that he
intended writing a warning;
that wasn’t necessary, since
there would be no more exper-
imental subjects. But he
would have to find a way of
getting a message across if he
was going to save himself.

ONCE more, the forbidden
thought assailed the
fringe of his consciousness
and he barely succeeded in
driving it back into obscurity
again. But how long could he
keep it up ?

He stood paralyzed beside
the bed, afraid that even the
slightest movement would
somehow trip the trigger that
was hidden so close to the sur-
face of his thought stream.

If he could only find some
way of letting them know he
was in danger! Naturally, he
wouldn’t be able to say what
the peril was. For he would
have to bring it to the surface
of his mind first. And that, in
itself, would be fatal.

But if they knew he was
still in the teleportive phase,
and if they saw the perspira-
tion on his face and his ex-
pression of horror, then they
would certainly realize the
immediate need for sedation.

One simple sentence would
do it. And he could pen that
message without skirting too
close to the forbidden thought.
Cautiously, he made his way

to the writing table. As
though he were sitting on an
explosive that might go otf
with any one of his next move-
ments, he gingerly wrote :

I exposed myself for a six-

day period!

The door opened and he
turned slowly to watch Kate
Connerly enter. He waved the
sheet of paper so that she
might see it and come read
what he had written. He
would have shouted the mes-
sage, but just then he was
frantically fighting off an im-
pulse to open his mind to the
thought that would send him
on his last impulsive leap.

He tried to make a noise in
his throat. But nothing came
out.

He stared terrified at the
chair and the blanket that was
draped across her other arm
and he wanted to shout: Not
that! Not that!

But even thinking about the
protest invited a return of the
disastrous thought.

She took a quick glance in
his direction, not really seeing
enough to sense that some-
thing was wrong, and began
' wrestling the chair again.

And even before she said
them, he knew that she would
speak the fatal suggestive
words :

“It’s such a beautiful day
outside. Dr. Sanderson. You’re
going to go bask in the sun.”

END

THE LAST LEAP

Worlds of if

Book Reviews by Frederik Pohl

TWO of the most complicat-
ed brains recently applied
to science fiction are to be
found in the skulls of Robert
A. W. Lowndes and James
Blish. Blish in his own right
has produced a dozen science
fiction books, most good, some
outstanding. If Lowndes has
been less prolific, it is because
he has spent the last twenty
years editing science fiction
(and other) magazines, thus
putting most of his creative
thought into other people’s
stories.

In their first collaboi'ation
novel. The Duplicated Man
(Avalon), these two have
brewed such a mash of inven-
tion and imagination as has
not been seen since van Vogt.
The distillate is raw, but it is
dizzying and sometimes very
sweet. We have every reason
to believe that Blish-Lowndes
wrote this novel with tongues
in cheek; certainly at least a
part of their intention was to
caricature the smirking stick
figures which so impossibly
triumph in a typical van Vogt
work (which are — has anyone
noticed ? — the same soulless,
pointless totems as populate
the works of Ayn Rand). In
this they succeeded. But they

did more. They produced a
novel.

Their central character is
Paul Danton. He is the Dupli-
cated Man. Blish and Lowndes
describe him as a cardboard
figure : he is a dedicated revo-
lutionary but a totally ineffec-
tive one; he hates the world
state, but can find no better
tactic to use against it than
joining an underground con-
spiracy which has yet to
achieve its first success of any
kind. This doesn’t matter.
Blish-Lowndes need Danton
only to serve as a canvas on
whom they can paint half a
dozen other characters, each
part Danton and part someone
else. The interplay of the sev-
en duplicated Dantons is one
of the great merits of the
book.

The action of the story con-
cerns (among much else) a
sort of planned cold war be-
tween Earth and Venus, a war
that is based on deception and
sustained by fraud. The rul-
ing bodies of each planet are
all working at cross purposes,
each individual councilor try-
ing to achieve his own cryptic
aims, both groups honey-
combed with espionage and
riddled with disloyalty. There

is always an overt purpose
(irrelevant) and a real pur-
pose (concealed) for every
act. When the interplanetary
war finally hots up, it is wag-
ed with nearly Nexialist strat-
egy. Floods of nuclear missiles
are mere diversions. The ulti-
mate victorious stroke consists
of rolling an empty barrel
down a long flight of stairs.

The Duplicated Man is
a fantastically complicated
book. In inept hands, it would
be utterly tiresome. In the
hands of Blish and Lowndes,
it is — ^amazingly! — clear, logi-
cal and gripping. It possesses
cascades of inventive detail,
big (the marvelous immortal,
Geoffrey Thomas) and little
(the characteristic smudged
lips of the Venusians, caused
by the folk belief that ball-
point pens write better under
water). It is a rewarding
work. In the age of the Dis-
posable Science Fiction Novel,
designed like Kleenex to be
used once and thrown away.
The Duplicated Man is a story
which improves with re-read-
ing. Astonishing, but there it
is.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE has
a sharp mind and a disci-
plined typewriter and his
stories of space exploration
have that rare and satisfying
quality, the feel of being the
authentic reminiscences of an
Old Space Dog. In The Chal-
lenge of the Space Ship (Har-
per), he is permitted to cast

off the fiction format and pre-
sent some two hundred pages
of pure fact and speculation —
why aliens haven’t come to
Earth, and what a summer-
resort satellite may be like;
whether climate control is
feasible, and how to travel be-
tween the stars.

What is good about these
essays is very, very good.
When he speaks of wartime
radar and of “FIDO” (the
R.A.F. fog-dispersal system
used to get bombers safely
down from the thick British
skies), we all can afford to lis-
ten. He was on the spot. He
has had five sightings of
UFOs himself; in explaining
them, he explains away nearly
all of the case the flying-
saucerites have so laboriously
built up. Where he writes of
the probable shape of a sleep-
ing compartment on a Mars-
bound rocket, he is discussing
a subject to which he has
given much thought and a
great deal of study. His guess
is still only a guess, but it has
become the informed guess of
an expert.

There are ten or twelve
pieces as good as these in The
Challenge of the Space Ship.
Unfortunately there are also
ten or twelve others. In “The
Men on the Moon,” Clarke
identifies for us several dozen
historical figures after whom
lunar craters have been
named ; surely this is only tep-
idly exciting to anyone. In
“The Star of the Magi,” he

tries to explain the Star that
led the wise men to Bethlehem
and arrives at the conclusion
that it was a supernova
(which it surely was not. If
the star-gazers of Egypt,
China and India had somehow
missed it, those of Rome
would not. We know that one
of Rome’s greatest astrolo-
gers, Thrasyllus, was in Asia
Minor at the time) . In “Ques-
tion Time,” the subject for
discussion is not science at all
but that quite different topic,
the problems of lecturing on
science. The final piece in the
book, “Of Space and the
Spirit,” is a diffuse gather-all
which touches on everything
and covers nothing.

These sections, and one or
two others, are the dross in
The Challenge of the Space
Ship. They do not dim the lus-
ter of the gold that appears
elsewhere in the book, but
they make one wish that the
publisher had been a more se-
lective miner.

A MORE rewarding Clarke —
and probably the biggest sci-
ence fiction book of recent
years — is his Across the Sea
of Stars (Harcourt, Brace),
which contains eighteen short
stories and two complete nov-
els, or rather more than the
wordage of three ordinary
books, in one binding and at
one single price. This is a bar-
gain.

It is also a first-rate in-
troduction to Clarke’s work, if

the reader who needs one hap-
pens to exist.

The novels are Earthlight
(a peculiarly plausible inter-
planetary war between Earth
and its scatter of solar colo-
nies) and Childhood’s End
(concerning’ the supercession
of the human race by its own
evolved children). "The short
stories do not include all of
Clarke’s best— “The Nine Bil-
lion Names of God” is miss-
ing, and so is “The Star” — but
they show his ways and moods.
Arthur Clarke finds it irritat-
ing to be told that “Rescue
Party” is his best story be-
cause it was his very first.
Therefore that fact will not
be commented upon at this
time, but it is here, and it is
a magnificent yarn, and there
are many others very nearly
as good.

DAMON KNIGHT possesses
wit and invention, and dis-
plays both in Masters of Evo-
lution, as his book publishers
(Ace) have retitled his old
Galaxy novella. City folk and
country folk hate each other
and no longer have any peace-
able contact with each other.
So as not to confuse the read-
er with on-the-other-hands,
Knight has made it a premise
that there is nothing useful,
good or desirable about any
machine — any machine — and
the only satisfactory way of
life for humanity is biological.

To document it, Knight
has invented some splendidly

evolved plants and animals —
parrot sort of things for stor-
ing data and transmitting
messages, ferriferous bushes
whose fruits are Bowie knives,
etc. The merely technological
cities get the worst of it, but
Knight convinces you that to
put them out of their misery is
entirely a kindnes, as he de-
scribes the crushing load of
absolutely essential labor-sav-
ing devices that each city
dweller must drag about. This
one is fun.

THE OTHER half of the dou-
ble volume is Fire in the Heav-
ens, in which George 0. Smith
rids nuclear physics of that
pesky little problem, the neu-
trino. There isn’t any neu-
trino, Smith says. What made
physicists think there was
such a thing is the previously
undiscovered fact that every
time ener^ is expended, a lit-
tle bit of it drains off to make
trouble in the Sun. That is
how stars go nova, and that’s
what our heroes have to pre-
vent in Fire in the Heavens.

Smith has written a lot of
science fiction stories very like
this one. As he is an engineer
by profession, his gadgets
give the enjoyable illusion of
working, which is a plus. Still,
because he concentrates on
the gadgetry to the exclusion
of the development of the
characters, this is a very se-
rious minus. Not only by
gadgetry but by cocktail-hour
dialogue and by action, the

reader is entertained, but he
is almost never made to feel.

What’s wrong with that?
Why, nothing much, but it is
a surprise all the same to find
that after two decades George
0. Smith can surprise us with
as warm and moving a story
as another new book under his
byline. The Fourth R (Ballan-
tine) .

In The Fourth R, Smith
turns his back on gum-chew-
ing electronic technicians and
dauntless space voyages. His
hero is a boy, Jimmy Holden.
Jimmy was conceived and
brought to birth because his
parents, both scientists, need-
ed a child for their researches
into mechanical education.
Their researches succeeded,
but the parents died abruptly,
leaving young Jimmy, six
years old, with an adult edu-
cation but a child’s brain, a
world of knowledge but a
body just four feet tall.
Worse, Jimmy is utterly alone.
He dares confide in no one,
and he dares not stay with his
guardian — whose interest in
the mechanical educator was
extreme, and dangerous.

Smith has written Jimmy’s
story with inventiveness and
thought, and, above all, with
sympathetic understanding of
young Jimmy Holden. It is a
splendid job. The person who
doesn’t much like science fic-
tion will enjoy this book, and
so will the person who does.

Prolific Smith has still an-
other book for us this month

— and still another publisher.
Path of Unreason comes out
under the Gnome Press im-
print, James Forrest Carroll,
Smith’s bero, is either a cata-
tonic suffering from overwork
and deep-seated psychic flaws,
or the victim of a plot on the
part of alien invaders of
Earth. Either premise might
make a useful and entertain-
ing book, but as Smith has
meticulously refused to dis-
tinguish between the lady and
the tiger for 185 pages, and
thumbs his nose at our igno-
rance in an epilogue, the effect
is more mystifying than
amusing.

ADAM CHASE’S The Golden
Ape (Avalon) concerns a pe-
culiar young giant who com-
mutes between worlds, fight-
ing duels like a very John Car-
ter and rescuing a girl very
like Dejah Thoris from quite
Barsoomian perils. It has a
great deal of action and color,
but it also has a great deal of
tripe. Hank Searls’s first
novel. The Big X (Harper) , is
a first-rate, fast-moving, tech-
nically reliable story of a test
pilot flying the last-but-one
ancestor of the spaceship. The
Big X is science fiction, but
only just; in another year or
so, it will be history. Yet it
contains more of the challenge
of the unknown than any
dozen routine intergalactic
blood-baths.

In The Stars Are Too High
(Random House), Agnew H.

Bahnson, Jr., proposes a se-
cretly built spaceship which
its inventors use to pretend
the Earth is being explored by
aliens, so as to unite mankind
and end war. This theme has
been so well explored by oth-
ers, principally Theodore
Sturgeon, that only great skill
and inventive detail could jus-
tify another handling. These
elements do not occur in The
Stars Are Too High. It is an
inferior book; what’s worse,
its publishers have claimed for
it the status of a classic, which
is disgraceful.

Bombs in Orbit, by Jeff
Sutton, is an Ace original
concerning a Russian hydro-
gen-bomb satellite project and
an American rocket pilot’s
fight to nullify it. Sometimes
the reasoning is thin, but most
of the detail is excellent, the
suspense is lushly troweled on
and the pace never lets up.

Murray Leinster quietly
goes on and on writing first-
rate science fiction stories, as
he has done since 1926. (If he
did not appear in a science
fiction magazine befoi’e that
year, it is only because there
was no science fiction maga-
zine to appear in.) Apparently
he will go on forever. This is
an attractive prospect. In
Monsters and Such (Avon) ,
an unprepossessing title has
been given to a fine collection
of his more recent stories.
Only “Proxima Centuari”
(1935) goes back more than a
decade, but it is well worth

reviving; and all the others in
the book are worth keeping
alive indefinitely.

Jerry Sohl has two novels
for us at once. The first is a
reprint of his Rinehart novel,
The Transcendent Man (Ban-
tam) , which lets us in on the
well-kept secret of Man’s rap-
id evolutionary rise. Capel-
lans are behind it. They drive
us upward, for they live on
our brain power ; unfortunate-
ly, they are about to leave us
and we will then rapidly re-
vert to the animal. Sohl’s hero
must decide what to do about
all this.

In One Against Herculum
(Ace), Sohl invents for us a
future city-colony in which
crime and violence are kept
under control by licensing the
privilege of criminal activity.
The idea has its merits, but
Sohl has made almost no use
of it, preferring to drop that
notion and get on with another
underground revolt against a
dictatorial state, and so the
story quickly confines itself
to routine shoot-and-be-shot.
This is a double volume, of
which the flip side is Secret
of the Lost Race, by Andre
Norton, a competent time-
killer concerning evil exploit-
ers of a frontier planet. Our
hero (who, you will hardly
fail to guess, turns out to be
one of the Lost Race himself)
sets everything straight in a
few knockdown brawls.

Miss Norton also offers
The Beast Master (Harcourt,

Brace), which gives us a de-
molished Earth and a dis-
persed handful of humans
scattered among the non-hu-
man civilized planets of the
Galaxy. Her hero is a Navajo
who, in the war that destroy-
ed Earth, was a commando
leader of a squad of animals
trained to help wage war.

In Seed of Light (Ballan-
tine), Edmund Cooper spans
many centuries and many
light-years and yet manages
to maintain a continuity of
narrative while, generation
after generation, his charac-
ters are born, grow and die.
Earth is self-destroyed ; only
ten humans survive, in a
rocket headed for a hoped-for
planet of Alpha Centauri. But
Alpha Centauri is barren ; the
ship wheels around it and
heads for Sirius. If there is
no planet circling Sirius, they
will try Procyon; if not Pro-
cyon, then Vega . . . then Al-
tair . . . The handful of men,
women and babies in the ship
are all of humanity, and they
will not let themselves be de-
stroyed.

Talbot Mundy’s celebrated
series concerning the adven-
tures of Prince Tros aren’t
really science fiction, but they
are fun. In Tros of Samo-
thrace (Fantasy Classic Li-
brary), the prince battles
Norsemen, pre-Roman Brit-
ons and Julius Caesar. In
Purple Pirate, he tackles Cleo-
patra in intrigue, her sister
in love, and Mark Antony in

battle. Tros is always exciting.
What’s more, Mundy always
does his homework — if his
historical facts are sometimes
false, it is because of license,
not ignorance.

Robot Hunt (Avalon), by
Roger Lee Vernon, opens into
the middle of a complicated
and pulse-stirring spy hunt in
a future Paris. It is pure Key-
stone Kops chase, but it suc-
ceeds in catching the interest
at once and the pace is sus-
tained to the very end. Vernon
conceives an Earth in which
each sovereign nation has its
shield of impenetrable force
screens, thus neutralizing all
weapons and ending war for-
ever— until someone discov-
ers a way through the screens.
Then, of course, the whole
bloody fuss starts all over
again. Robot Hunt is compos-
ed of ingredients which have
produced dozens of the worst
literary clinkers of our times,
but Vernon stirs in thought.

In Starman’s Quest
(Gnome), Robert Silverberg
proposes to entertain the teen-
age audience with a story
about a 300-year-old hero
coeval with his readers. (He
has spent most of his life in
near-light-speed space travel.
Under relativity law, his ob-
jective-time age is only seven-
teen.) Silverberg no sooner
settles on this theme than he
abandons it in favor of a
travelogue on an implausible
future Earth, populated by
unlikely nuts.

Gnome also gives us The
Dawning Light by Robert
Randall, a sequel to The
Shrouded Planet. There are
strange sights and events, but
you must not linger to exam-
ine them, for the skin of solid
plot and thought that sustains
the story is only millimeters
thick, and if you pause to re-
flect, you will plunge through
the crust.

For the younger ones, Clif-
ford B. Hicks’s First Boy on
the Moon (Winston) under-
takes to initiate children from
eight to ten into the excite-
ment of interplanetary travel.
A boy named Mike and a boy
named Mud stow away on a
rocket piloted by Mike’s dad-
dy; and, winked at by an
utterly incredible space-sta-
tion commander, are allowed
to participate in the first
lunar landing. Being very
young, they may not be very
critical, so the worn and rudi-
mentary plot may get by.

Readers who wish to con-
trast practice with theory in
the case of the undersigned
may wish to avail themselves
of two new Ballantine titles:
Wolf bane (a novel, in collab-
oration with the late C. M.
Kornbluth) and Tomorrow
Times Seven (a collection of
short stories) . In a field where
a reviewer is a writer is an
editor is a fan, the author con-
siders himself mighty bi-ave
in speaking so forthrightly of
the work of his colleagues.

END

To Each His Own

By JACK SHARKEY

A world ideal for life will have life on it —

but don’t expect ideal life!

ON SEPTEMBER the 24th,
1965, the Venusian space-
ship Investigator floated gent-
ly to Earth in Times Square.

The sleek metal belly of the
ship touched feather-light up-
on the asphalt “X” of Broad-
way and Seventh Avenue, and
stubby stabilizing legs extend-
ed from ports along the sides
of the hull, bracing the ship’s
mass against dangerous roll-
ing, leaving it hulking there
like some metallic beetle at
rest.

The sun was almost directly
overhead, sending yellow-gold
serpentine glints wriggling on
the gleaming surface of the
ship. After the ve^ slight
thumping as the ship settled
into place, there was no sound
throughout the nearby streets
of New York.

Absent was the noise of
traffic, the hubbub of voices.

the hurry-scurry of pedes-
trians. Nothing but heavy op-
pressive silence everywhere
outside the body of the ship.
No apprehensive eye appear^
at a window to stare at the
visitor from the nearest plan-
et. No telephone was picked up
in nervous haste to warn the
authorities of the possible
menace to the peoples of
Earth. Just the silence and the
dancing sunlight.

Inside the spaceship, there
was swift, practiced activity.

The Venusians were a pick-
ed, trained crew. This, the
first contact with the third
planet, called for quick reac-
tion, accurate evaluation, and
competent decision.

Each of the five aboard had
a job to do immediately upon
landing. With no conversation,
they were all at their tasks. It
was an operation they’d prac-

ticed many times over, back at
their home base on Venus.
They were sick of the thing
even before being sent to
Earth. But their training had
paid well, for now their mo-
tions were automatic, each
separate action swift, sure and
precise.

Gwann, the pilot, his heavy-
lidded eyes narrowed with the
intensity of concentration,
checked and re-checked his in-
struments and gauges. His
nimble three-digited hands,
with their long, flat palms,
flickered from button to
switch to dial. He locked the
stabilizing legs into position,
once each leg had made its
contact securely with the sur-
face outside. He dampered the
power of the interplanetary
drive, leaving its deadly ema-
nations at a low, and therefore
safe, degree of pulsation. He
checked the release valves of
the individual skimmers, mak-
ing certain at the same time
that, should the atmosphere
outside be hostile to Venusian
breathing, the tanks were fill-
ed and the cockpit seals were
tight and break-free.

DROG, the navigator, used
compass, ruler and stylus
upon the scant, almost rudi-
mentary Earth map, to deter-
mine the exact point of contact
with the third planet. Venu-
sian telescopes were able to
see — very indistinctly — conti-
nental outlines at the twenty-
million-mile distance to their

neighbor planet. But the foggy
overhang that shrouded their
home planet had made sharp
topographical drawing well-
nigh impossible.

Volval, as Drog passed him
the information, relayed the
findings by light-beam back to
their home base. The geo-
graphical location, coded into
the tight beam, sped outward
from the surface of Earth to-
ward Venus, where it would
not be received for at least a
minute and a half. Volval, hav-
ing transmitted the data,
waited impatiently while the
Venusian biochemist tested
the outside surface against
their leaving the ship.

Jorik, the biochemist, re-
volved the small metal “cage”
with its quivering, burbling
Venusian life-forms on it back
into the space over his work-
table. The animals seemed un-
harmed by their exposure to
the alien planet, but he began
more definitive tests upon the
samplings of atmosphere and
soil and vegetation brought
back by a tiny robo-skimmer
that had searched throughout
a three-mile radius of the ship
immediately after the landing,
and had returned by homing
beam to its tiny access port
in the thick metal side of the
ship.

While Volval waited in in-
creasing irritation, and Jorik
ran his tests, Klendro, the
most expendable member of
the expedition, studied his
speech over and over, his

JACK SHARKEY

three-valved heart squirting
its watery blood through his
tiny, hairlike arteries and
veins.

Klendro was almost a so-
cial outcast with these oth-
ers, these real spacemen,
though his job, he felt, was the
most important. Klendro was
the Venusian ambassador to
the governments of Earth. He
went over his speech again,
hoping that the Earth broad-
casts picked up now and then
on Venus had been accurate
enough for the Venusian lin-
guists to write him a speech
that wouldn’t embarrass the
Earth people by its inane mis-
uses of their tongue.

Broadcasts had indicated
that the major powers on
Earth were the United States
— whatever those were — of
America and Soviet Russia.
The Russian broadcasts, how-
ever, being nothing more than
a series of eulogies declaring
the happiness of life in Russia,
had been too lacking in
breadth to give the linguists
much to work on. They had
therefore chosen English as
the tongue in which Klendro
was to make his speech.

He lifted the scroll once
more and began reading his
speech half aloud, having a
bit of trouble, as usual, in con-
trolling the square-tipped sur-
face of his tongue in forming
the unfamiliar syllables.

“Pipple of Arth,” he said,
slowly and with much effort,
“it is with grett plazzer that

TO EACH HIS OWN

we mek this, tha farst contact
with arr nebber planet. We
are from tha second planet
from yer — or mebbe Uh shudd
seh arr — sun. Tha planet you
knaw as Venus. We feel that
we can share with arr nebber
planet the fronts of arr — of
arr — ” Klendro braced him-
self, then forced out awkward-
ly, “moot-yoo-ull sa-yan-tific
ri-sarch . . .”

He refolded the long coil of
the scroll and stuffed it into
his belt-sack. Well, he told
himself, for better or worse.
I’ve got to give this speech.
He wished he were anywhere
but here.

SOME of the broadcasts had
indicated a certain bellig-
erency in the inhabitants of
this alien planet. He wondered,
with a kind of sick fright, if
he would ever have the oppor-
tunity to deliver the speech,
even badly. Some of the more
esoteric phrasings of the
Earth broadcasts had eluded
the interpretations of the Ve-
nusian linguists. One of the
more recurrent phrases was a
“slug in the guts.” They were
not sure exactly what this en-
tailed, but, from the context,
the linguists were certain that
it was something dire, possibly
fatal.

Klendro was a very unhap-
py Venusian.

“Volval!” Klendro heard
Drog cry out. “Did you send
that stuff?”

“Yes,” the light-beam oper-

ator called back. “I’m waiting
an Jorik now.”

“All set here,” called Jorik,
coming into Volval’s compart-
ment, followed by Gwann.
“The atmosphere is breath-
able. A little heavy on the oxy-
gen and light on the carbon
dioxide, but that was expected
before we took off. If we take
deep inhales and periodic radi-
ation, we should be all right.”
“Fine,” said Gwann, the
pilot and leader, as Klendro
came into the room with the
others. “Better keep your guns
loose in their holsters, though.
You know what they’ve told us
about the Earthmen.”

“Hot-headed.” Volval nod-
ded.

“Will we take the skim-
mers?” asked Jorik. “Or do
you think the Earthmen would
prefer being met without the
barrier-screens around us ?”
"They’d prefer it, all right !”
said Drog. “However, in my
opinion — ”

“We’re going to have to
chance it sooner or later with-
out the screens,” said Gwann.
“The batteries in the skim-
mers won’t last forever. We
might as well go out there as
we are.”

“Who goes first?” asked
Jorik.

“Well,” Gwann shrugged,
“if the crowds look hostile, I
should go, as your leader. If
they seem merely curious,
then it’s up to Klendro, as our
ambassador, to make his
speech.”

Jorik frowned. “Now, wait,
Gwann. Perhaps I ought to tell
you. The sight records on the
robo-skimmer showed no evi-
dence of Earthmen outside the
ship.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said
Gwann, his eyes flashing. “Ve-
nus reports this city is one of
the most populous.”

Jorik smiled wryly. “Then
the populace certainly ducked
out of sight quickly when they
saw the robo-skimmer com-
ing.”

Gwann seemed on the point
of making a sharp retort, and
instead turned away toward
the exit lock. “Since things
seem suspicious. I’d best go
first.”

“Sir,” said Volval, laying a
hand upon his leader’s arm.

“Yes?” queried Gwann,
pausing.

“Good luck, sir,” Volval fal-
tered, drawing his hand back.

“Thanks,” said Gwann, not
unkindly. “For Venus,” he
added.

“For Venus,” the others
echoed.

Gwann released the safety
lock on the circular metal door
and turned the valve handle.
Slowly, the door recessed itself
in the metal pocket in the
ship’s wall, and Gwann went
out into the yellow glow of the
sunlight glittering in Times
Square.

The sun was glowing crim-
son on the horizon when
the five Venusians met once

JACK SHARKEY

more at the door of their ship.

“Nothing — no clue, no peo-
ple,” said Jorik, his face wrin-
kled with puzzlement. “I can’t
understand it.”

“Perhaps some holo-
caust . . . ?” Volval began
weakly.

“Or a war?” Drog hinted
gravely.

“Impossible!” said Gwann,
leaning against one of the legs
of the gigantic ship. “There
is a conspicuous absence of
anything that might be con-
strued as a weapon of war.
There are no bodies in the
buildings or in the streets. No
wreckage anywhere.”

“Perhaps they have been
frightened by our appearance
and have gone into hiding?”
asked Klendro, fingering the
edge of his now futile scroll
where it protruded from his
belt-sack.

“Nonsense,” said their lead-
er. “From all we’ve learned of
the Earthmen, fright would
only make them aggressive.
They would not have hidden
from us ; they’d have tried to
shoot us down when we
emerged from the ship.”

“There was one thing . . .”
said Jorik slowly. “I almost
did not see it, but its shadow
passed close by me on the side
of one of the buildings, and I
looked up barely in time to get
a glimpse of it before it van-
ished.”

“What was it like?” asked
Gwann quickly.

“Some sort of animal, prob-

ably carnivorous,” said Jorik.
“I cannot be certain, of course,
but 1 saw a mouth with teeth
bespeaking flesh-eating. Quite
a — ” he repressed a shudder —
“quite a large mouth.”

“Strange,” said Gwann.
“Exceedingly strange. You
saw only the one?”

Jorik nodded.

“Well,” said Gwann, “one
carnivore cannot have ac-
counted for a population that
runs into the millions. Besides,
the Earthmen would be able to
deal with mere animal life.”

Klendro remembered the
“slug in the guts” and
blanched.

“What should we do, sir?”
asked Volval. “Our orders
were to make peaceful contact
with the Earthmen. If there
are no Earthmen — ?”

“Calm yourself, Volval.”
Gwann smiled, patting the
younger man upon the shoul-
der. *‘If there are Earthmen
to contact, we’ll make that
contact. I have an idea.”
“What, sir?” asked Drog.
“We shall each take one of
the skimmers and investigate
the surface of the planet. Now,
while our maps are incom-
plete, I feel that Drog can
draw us up competent enough
maps to guide us over the sur-
face of Earth.”

“I can try, sir,” said Drog.
“We’ll meet back here at the
ship in five days,” said Gwann.
“All of you take along enough
supplies for five days, plus an

TO EACH HIS OWN

extra day’s rations in case of
emergency. The homing beam
on our ship will bring you
safely back if you get lost.”
'‘One thing, sir,” said Jorik,
his brow creased in a frown.
"We’d best all take along extra
ammunition for the guns.”
"The carnivores?”

The biochemist nodded.
"Where there’s one, there are
bound to be others. That one
I saw was large enough to bite
a chunk out of a skimmer.”
Klendro, pale already, lost
more color.

Each was assigned a conti-
nent to check. Of the two
extra continents, Drog took
one, and Gwann the other, the
consensus being that the pilot
and navigator could better cov-
er extra territory than the
others, who were less used to
piloting the sleek skimmers.

Volval was to go to the
Europe - Asia land mass,
Gwann to Africa and Antarc-
tica, Klendro to Australia,
Jorik to South America, and
Drog to Arctica, after first
checking over the North
American Continent on which
they had landed.

"Something exceedingly
strange,” said Jorik, before
they separated, "about the
consolidation of their civiliza-
tion. So much wasted land
area.”

"The sooner I get back to
Venus, the happier I’ll be,”
said Gwann, keeping his voice
down so that only Jorik, the

biochemist, could hear him,
"This place is eerie. It’s — it’s
like a ghost planet.”

"And there’s something
wrong about the buildings.
They are abominably ineffi-
cient. I can barely conceive the
uses of some of the artifacts.”
"Maybe,” said Gwann sud-
denly, "we never will know!”
"Sir,” said Volval, ap-
proaching the pilot, "I’ve dis-
covered some maps.” He held
out a packet of papers, tinted
blue and brown.

"Good work, Volval,” said
Gwann, taking the packet.
"Where did you find them?”
"In one of those small shops,
not far from the ship, sir. I
cannot read the designations,
of course, but I thought that,
by a comparison with the
maps from Venus Observa-
tory, we might — ”

"That’s intelligent think-
ing,” said Gwann, nodding.
"Their maps are bound to be
similar to ours. Klendro!
What can you make of these?”
The ambassador came over
and took the thick packet. The
paper of the maps, as he did
so, tore apart, and bits and
pieces of the soft, pulpy edges
dropped in a shower to the
street.

"Not very substantial mate-
rial, is it?” he muttered, un-
folding the topmost of the
maps. He looked over the col-
ored line drawings on the page
in some bewilderment. The let-
ters spelling out "Rand Mc-
Nally” meant nothing to his

JACK SHARKEY

alien eyes. The map itself was
a mercator projection of the
globe, the extreme northern
and southern continents being
somewhat distorted. After a
few moments, he shook his
head.

“I’m sorry. All the Earth
broadcasts that we intercepted
gave me a working knowledge
of the spoken word, sir, but
I’m afraid their actual word
symbols are beyond me. It
would take trained linguists
months, perhaps years, to get
a correlation between the
sound of the word and its writ-
ten image.”

“Drog?” said Gwann, turn-
ing to the navigator.

Drog took the rotting sheet
in his hands and studied the
configurations of the conti-
nents. After a bit, he bright-
ened.

“Sir, I think I can figure
this out. According to our
landing calculations, we are
here.” He jabbed a digit at
one section of the page, and
was distressed when it went
right through. “The material
seems to be falling apart, sir.”

“Perhaps,” Jorik suggested,
“it is undergoing some unnat-
ural stress — possibly tied up
somehow with whatever it was
that depopulated this city?”

“A good point, Jorik,” said
Gwann.

Along black shadow slid
across the pavement near
their feet and the five Venu-
sians, very much startled, look-

ed overhead. They were barely
in time to see the huge gray
form of the carnivore before
it vanished behind a sign atop
a nearby building which bore
the mystifying information
“Pepsi-Cola.”

“There, sir!” cried Jorik.
“That’s exactly like the one I
saw earlier!”

“Those teetkl” Klendro
whimpered. “They could bite
one of us in two!”

“And what they could do to
us, they could do to an Earth-
man,” Gwann said specula-
tively. “From the sizes of the
doorways in these buildings,
and the clothing on display in
the shop windows, the Earth-
men could not have been much
larger than us.”

“Sir,” said Drog, holding up
the map so that the leader
could see it, “look here. This
blue section that runs all over
the map. You see, it’s marked
circle-arc-fork-cone-zigzag.”
“Yes,” said Gwann. “I see.
What about it?”

“Well, sir, it recurs on the
map, but each time it has a
new group of symbols in front
of it. What can it mean?”
Gwann frowned and studied
the five symbols : 0-C-E-A-N.

“Seems to suggest a similar-
ity between all of them,” said
Jorik. “Perhaps the first syro-
bol only means that the section
is in a different place.”

All five Venusians studied
A-R-C-T-I-C, A-N-T-A-R-C-
T-I-C, I-N-D-I-A-N, and the
other symbols that were used

TO EACH HIS OWN

in conjunction with the mys-
terious 0-C-E-A-N.

''A tribal tabu!” exclaimed
Jorik.

‘'What are you talking
about, Jorik?” said Gwann
impatiently.

“You recall I said there
seemed something strange
about the consolidation of the
populace in certain areas ? The
wasted land space?”

“Yes, yes. What about it?”

“All these sections marked
0-C-E-A-N are the unused
areas. There must have been
some sort of tribal superstition
about dwelling in those areas.
That would explain why all
the people lived on the higher
ground here.”

“I — I would have expected
to find something blue in that
area,” said Gwann uncertain-
ly. “Or else why is it so mark-
ed?”

“Sir,” said Jorik respectful-
ly, “some sections are colored
very oddly — even in red. Yet
no such colors were found any-
where on the planet by our
telescopes, were they? And
none of these large blue areas
shows population centers.
Tabu areas, obviously — not to
be inhabited.”

Gwann shivered. “The long-
er I stay here, the less I like
it. Come on. Each of you take
one of these maps. Drog, you
assign us to a specific sector
by these maps, rather than by
ours. We'll meet back here at
the ship in five days.”

One by one, the Venusians

got aboard their skimmers,
making sure the protective
barriers were working, and
then glided off to investigate
the ghost planet.

Drog, sliding in his trim
craft over the Noiih
American continent, stopped
many times, at each large city
he discovered, but the story
was the same as in New York.
Empty buildings, no particu-
lar damages except what could
be accounted for by decay and
long disuse. Every so often —
more often than he enjoyed —
a flock of the huge carnivores
soared above his skimmer,
their long, dark shadows slith-
ering over the cockpit in the
dancing yellow sunlight.

Once, one of them broke
away from the group and
spiraled down to investigate
his craft. Drog jabbed the but-
ton of the nose-gun hastily,
and a lance of metal sped with
a flicker of light into the thick
hide of the oncoming monster.

A thick spray of blood gush-
ed from the wound, as the
great beast writhed in torment
before sliding down through
the atmosphere toward the
distant ground. Its blood hung
in a grisly trail over it as it
plunged, marking its passage,
then began to fall slowly after
the beast.

Drog was by now almost a
mile beyond the point where
he had fired at the carnivore,
but he wasn't too far away to
see its hungry companions

JACK SHARKEY

swoop down after it and begin
rending it even before it
reached the ground.

He shuddered and looked
away.

As he soared onward, he de-
termined to keep the barrier
on all night long, while he
slept. If he could sleep . . .

North America taken care
of, as well as possible in his
limited time, Drog headed
northward for the continent of
Arctica.

Nothing but bare land and
ocean bottom met his eye.

Feeling increasingly queasy,
he nosed the skimmer around
and set it swishing back to-
ward New York.

JORIK watched the shadow
of his skimmer pacing his
own motion over the tops of
the tangled jungle trees below.
He inclined the nose of the
craft downward, and began a
shallow glide toward a clear-
ing in the midst of the dense
undergrowth.

Braking the skimmer gent-
ly, he let it settle slowly into
the resilient grip of the tall
yellow-brown grass in the
clearing. Making sure his gun
was loaded and the safety
catch off, he slid open the
cockpit and eased himself out.

He was — though of course
he didn’t know it — deep in the
Matto Grosso of South Amer-
ica. Everywhere he looked,
violent flares of color peeped
at him through the twisted,
swaying vines that clung

TO EACH HIS OWN

everjwhere. Nature had run
riot in the jungle. No subtle-
ties of shading or form here.
Long, sharp leaves gleamed
greenly on all sides of the bio-
chemist. Radiant reds glowed
from the shadowy depths of
forest beyond the small clear-
ing. Golden streamers hung in
profusion from each crooked
elbow of the chaotically twist-
ed tree branches all about him.

Despite the brilliance and
beauty of it, Jorik sensed a
hidden menace in the place.
He should, at that spot, have
been hearing shrieking, roar-
ing, bleating, grunting of ani-
mals, the cries of birds and
skittering of insects. There
was nothing but that all-
pervading silence.

Jorik moved slowly away
from the skimmer and a^
proached the nearest tree, his
scientist’s eye pondering some-
thing not-quite-right-looking
about it. As he got to it, and
touched it, the thick, corru-
gated bark fell into powder
between his fingers. He press-
ed, pried, thumped and tugged
at the tree. It was dead. Dead
and rotting.

His heart fluttered annoy-
ingly in his breast. There was
something frightening about
the way things were going. He
could understand a war de-
stroying human life, even civi-
lization, but this — this was
primeval territory. The beasts,
the plants, the lower forms of
life — ^these should have sur-
vived.

But they hadn’t.

Suddenly afraid, he rushed
back to his skinuner, slid into
the cockpit and took off, rising
at a swift vertical angle from
the dead jungle.

Toward the eastern coast of
South America, he saw many
fine hotels, with magnificent
curves of beaches following
the perimeter of the land mass
on which the people had lived
— already he was thinking of
them in the past tense — and
Jorik wondered at the absence
of the blue 0-C-E-A-N that
should have bordered those
beaches.

But as he glided outward
from the coast, curving steadi-
ly northward toward New
York, he saw that the beaches,
with their pale silver sands,
extended outward and down-
ward toward only more land,
soon becoming rocky, then
turning at last into mud and
ooze, with a sprinkling of
blackish-green weeds. But no
visible trace of the mysterious
0-C-E-A-N.

GWANN, searching through-
out Africa, fared no bet-
ter. Only the silence, the
rotting vegetation, and the
absence of landlocked life.
Higher in the atmosphere of
the ghost planet, he saw many
of the carnivores, but also
smaller animals, soaring in
gloriously colored groups, and
seemingly haiTnless. There
were times when he had to
pass through literal clouds of

these smaller beasts, whizzing
and bobbing and gliding past
him by the millions, only to
vanish in the hazy distance
with a blaze of color.

Africa having proven fruit-
less, Gwann directed the skim-
mer toward the opposite polar
region from that which Drog
was to investigate.

Like Drog, he found only
land there, and no continent.
The land was ocean bottom.
He consulted his map, but
there was nothing below his
skimmer that corresponded
with the cryptic mark-
ings: A-N-T-A-R-C-T-I-C

0-C-E-A-N.

He turned his skimmer
around and started back for
New York.

VOLVAL, CRUISING from
the Alps to the steppes and
back again, found nothing to
explain the disappearance of
the Earthmen. Many cities,
many lands, hamlets and vil-
lages, huts and palaces ... It
was the same every place. Si-
lence. Fleeting glimpses of the
carnivores and sometimes
tinier-but-similar beasts. But
no Earthmen.

KLENDRO HAD passed over
the surface of Australia fifty
times in his five alloted days
without discovering life of any
sort other than the carnivores.
And they, for some reason,
were unusually well represent-
ed in that region. They had
come at his skimmer in grin-

JACK SHARKEY

ning swanns, but the barrier
held firm, and the unlucky
nearer ones spun away with
scorched flesh glowing red, to
be tom to pieces by their com-
panions.

When he decided further in-
vestigation was useless, Klen-
dro was very glad to leave
that place. A group of the
carnivores gave chase, but
Klendro spun his ship about
long enough to shoot metal
darts into two of them. As the
others swerved back to begin
an impromptu feast on their
wounded companions, Klendro
turned the skimmer up to full
speed and made quick connec-
tion with the homing device
on the ship, back in New York.

“I DON’T understand it,” said
Gwann, on the night of the
fifth day. The Venusians were
all back in the ship in Times
Square, having a meal to-
gether that was partly to sat-
isfy their appetites, partly to
celebrate being together again
with their friends.

“It’s incredible, all right,”
said Jorik. “A whole planet —
and of a high degree of civili-
zation, too — wiped out. The
very vegetation dying. And
that’s the frightening part of
it; Not dead, mind you, dying.
That means that whatever
happened here happened re-
cently.”

“And those constructions in
the buildings,” said Volval,
staring bemusedly at the wall,
“the ones marked S-t-a-i-r-

w-a-y. I wonder what they
were for.”

“Obviously they were deco-
rations added by the archi-
tect,” said Drog. “Any fool
can see they served no pur-
pose. If anything, they hinder-
ed the use of the access slots
to the various levels of the
buildings.”

“Well,” said Gwann, “our
work here is through. We’d
better be heading back to
Venus.”

“And your report?” asked
Jorik.

“Positive,” said Gwann.
"Favorable for immediate pos-
session and colonization.”

“It’s a good little planet.”
Jorik nodded. “But why do
you suppose the Earthmen all
vanished ?”

“We’ll probably never
know,” Volval sighed.

“Not unless,” said Klendro,
indicating a bale of salvaged
Earth materials, “our lin-
guists and archeologists can
make some sense out of this
junk here.”

“Let’s hope so,” Gwann
said. ‘The mysteriousness of
this whole thing is going to
drive me crazy if they don’t.”

“Well, sir,” said Drog, con-
sulting his charts, “if we’re
going to take advantage of
juxtaposition of the two
planets — ”

“Right,” said Gwann, turn-
ing and making his way to-
ward the pilot’s compartment.
“We’ll depart from Earth in
ten minutes. Secure all hatches

TO EACH HIS OWN

and loose objects until we get
into space.”

The crew hurried to their
tasks.

Halfway to Venus, voi-
val, paging idly through
one of the rotting books from
Earth, gave a shout.

“What is it?” said Gwann,
coming into the light-beam
operator’s compartment,
stretching to ease the- muscle
cramps from his long stint in
the pilot’s cabin.

“I’ve found a picture of the
carnivore, sir!” said Volval
proudly. “Look, sir.”

“Hmm,” said Gwann, study-
ing the fading illustration. “I
believe you’re right. Jorik!”
The biochemist popped into
the compartment, his face cu-
rious. “Yes, sir? What is it?”
“Isn’t this one of your car-
nivores, Jorik?” asked Gwann,
giving him the book.

Jorik, reaching for the
book, nudged one of the news-
papers atop the stack near the
cabin wall, and the front page
fluttered unnoticed to the floor.
Across its surface were spread

the incomprehensible — to Ve-
nusian eyes — ^words :

LITHIUM BOMB TEST
COULD DESTROY WORLD

Noted Scientist Declares Dan-
ger of Polar Experiment ;

Melted Polar Caps
May Flood En-
tire Globe

Jorik studied the picture
carefully, his gills trickling a
faint stream of bubbles as he
concentrated on the image of
the carnivore. “Yes, that’s one
of them, sure enough. I wish
I could read Earth writing. I
wonder just what a T-i-g-e-r-
s-h-a-r-k is.”

Volval bobbed up from his
place and floated to a port in
the ceiling, through which he
could see the tiny, glittering
ball of Earth, its blue-green
surface sparkling like a star
against the black backdrop of
empty space.

“I can’t understand w^t
killed them,” he said. “Living
conditions were ideal”

END

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THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT

By MARGARET ST. CLAIR

Being a wizard missionary to the Free’l

needed more than magic —

it called for a miracle!

The spell the Free’l were
casting ought to have
drawn the moon down from
the heavens, made water run
uphill, and inverted the order
of the seasons. But, since they
had got broor’s blood instead
of newt’s, were using alganon
instead of vervet juice, and
were three days later than the
solstice anyhow, nothing hap-
pened.

Neeshan watched their an-
tics with a bitter smile.

He’d tried hard with them.

The Free’l were really a chal-
lenge to evangelical wizardry.
They had some natural talent
for magic, as was evinced by
the frequent attempts they
made to perform it, and they
were interested in what he
told them about its capacities.
But they simply wouldn’t take
the trouble to do it right.

How long had they been
stamping around in their cir-
cle, anyhow? Since early
moonset, and it was now al-
most dawn. No doubt they

101

would go on stamping all next
day, if not interrupted. It was
time to call a halt.

Neeshan strode into the
middle of the circle. Rhn, the
village chief, looked up from
his drumming.

“Go away,” he said. “You'll
spoil the chann."

“What charm? Can't you
see by now, Rhn, that it isn't
going to work?”

^'Of course it will. It just
takes time.”

'‘Hell it will. Hell it does.
Watch.”

Neeshan pushed Rhn to one
side and squatted down in the
center ofr the circle. From the
pockets of his black robe he
produced stylus, dragon's
blood, oil of anointing, and
salt.

He drew a design on the
ground with the stylus, drop-
ped dragon's blood at the cor-
ners of the parallelogram, and
touched the inner cusps with
the oil. Then, sighting careful-
ly at the double red and white
sun, which was just coming
up, he touched the outer cusps
with salt. An intense smoke
sprang up.

WHEN the smoke died
away, a small lizardlike
creature was visible in the
parallelogram.

“Tell the demon what you
want,” Neeshan ordered the
Free'l.

The Free'l hesitated. They
had few wants, after all,
which was one of the things

102

that made teaching them mag-
ic difficult.

“Two big dyla melons,” one
of the younger ones said at
last.

“A new andana necklace,”
said another.

“A tooter like the one you
have,” said Rhn, who was am-
bitious.

“Straw for a new roof on
my hut,” said one of the older
females.

“That's enough for now,”
Neeshan interrupted. “The
demon can't bring you a toot-
er, Rhn — you have to ask an-
other sort of demon for that.
The other things he can get.
Sammel, to work!”

The lizard in the parallelo-
gram twitched its tail. It dis-
appeared, and returned almost
immediately with melons, a
handsome necklace, and an
enormous heap of straw.

“Can I go now?” it asked.

“Yes.” Neeshan turned to
the Free'l, who were sharing
the dyla melons out around
their circle. “You see? ThaVs
how it ought to be. You cast a
spell. You're careful with it.
And it works. Right away.”

“When you do it, it works,”
Rhn answered.

“Magic works when any-
body does it. But you have to
do it right.”

Rhn raised his mud-plaster-
ed shoulders in a shrug. “It's
such a lot of dreeze, doing it
that way. Magic ought to be
fun.” He walked away,
munching on a slice of the

MARGARET ST. CLAIR

melon the demon had brought.

Neeshan stared after him,
his eyes hot. “Dreeze” was a
Free’l word that referred
originally to the nasal drip
that accompanied that race’s
virulent head colds. It had
been extended to mean almost
anything annoying. The
Free’l, who spent much of
their time sitting in the rain,
had a lot of colds in the head.

Wasn’t there anything to be
done with these people? Even
the simplest spell was too
dreezish for them to bother
with.

He was getting a headache.
He’d better perform a head-
ache-removing spell.

He retired to the hut the
Free’l had assigned to him.
The spell worked, of course,
but it left him feeling soggy
and dispirited. He was still
standing in the hut, wonder-
ing what he should do next,
when his big black-and-gold
tooter in the corner gave a
faint “woof.” That meant
headquarters wanted to com-
municate with him.

Neeshan carefully aligned
the tooter, which is basically
a sort of lens for focusing
neural force, with the rising
double suns. He moved his
couch out into a parallel posi-
tion and lay down on it. In a
minute or two he was deep in
a cataleptic trance.

The message from head-
quarters was long, circuitous,
and couched in the elaborate,
ego-caressing ceremonial of

THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT

high magic, but its gist was
clear enough.

“Your report received,” it
boiled down to. “We are glad
to hear that you are keeping
on with the Free’l. We do not
expect you to succeed with
them — none of the other mag-
ical missionaries we have sent
out ever has. But if you
should succeed, by any chance,
you would get your senior
warlock’s rating immediately.
It would be no exaggeration,
in fact, to say that the high-
est offices in the Brotherhood
would be open to you.”

Neeshan came out of his
trance. His eyes were
round with wonder and cupid-
ity. His senior warlock’s rat-
ing— why, he wasn’t due to
get that for nearly four
more six hundred-and-five-day
years. And the higest offices
in the Brotherhood — ^that
could mean anything. Any-
thing! He hadn’t realized the
Brotherhood set such store on
converting the Free’l. Well,
now, a reward like that was
worth going to some trouble
for.

Neeshan sat down on his
couch, his elbows on his knees,
his fists pressed against his
forehead, and tried to think.

The Free’l liked magic, but
they were lazy. Anything that
involved accuracy impressed
them as dreezish. And they
didn’t want anything. That
was the biggest difficulty.
Magic had nothing to offer

103

them. He had never, Neeshan
thought, heard one of the
Free’l express a want.

Wait, though. There was
Rhn.

He had shown a definite
interest in Neeshan’s footer.
Something in its intricate,
florid black-and-gold curves
seemed to fascinate him. True,
he hadn’t been interested in
it for its legitimate uses,
w'hich were to extend and de-
velop a magician’s spiritual
power. He probably thought
that having it would give him
more prestige and influence
among his people. But for one
of the Free’l to say “I wish I
had that” about anything
whatever meant that he could
be worked on. Could the foot-
er be used as a bribe?

Neeshan sighed heavily.
Getting a footer was painful
and laborious. A footer was
carefully fitted to an individ-
ual magician’s personality ; in
a sense, it was a part of his
personality, and if Neeshan
let Rhn have his footer, he
would be letting him have a
part of himself. But the
stakes were enormous.

Neeshan got up from his
couch. It had begun to rain,
but he didn’t want to spend
time performing a rain-re-
pelling spell. He wanted to
find Rhn.

Rhn was standing at the
edge of the swamp, luxuriat-
ing in the downpour. The
mud had washed from his
shoulders, and he was already

104

sniffling. Neeshan came to the
point directly.

“I’ll give you my footer,’’
he said, almost choking over
the words, “if you’ll do a spell
— a simple spell, mind you —
exactly right.”

Rhn hesitated. Neeshan felt
an impulse to kick him. Then
he said, “Well ...”

Neeshan began his instruc-
tions. It wouldn’t do for him
to help Rhn too directly, but
he was willing to do every-
thing reasonable. Rhn listen-
ed, scratching himself in the
armpits and sneezing from
time to time.

After Neeshan had been
through the directions twice,
Rhn stopped him. “No, don’t
bother telling me again — it’s
just more dreeze. Give me the
materials and I’ll show you.
Don’t forget, you’re giving
me the footer for this.”

He started off, Nee-
shan after him, to the lat-
ter’s hut. While Neeshan
looked on tensely, Rhn began
going through the actions
Neeshan had told him. Half-
way through the first decad,
he forgot. He inverted the or-
der of the hand-passes, sprin-
kled salt on the wrong point,
and mispronounced the names
in the invocation. When he
pulled his hands apart at the
end, only a tiny yellow flame
sprang up.

Neeshan cursed bitterly.
Rhn, however, was delighted.
“Look at that, will you!” he

MARGARET ST. CLAIR

exclaimed, clapping his chap-
ped, scabby little hands to-
gether. “It worked! I'll take
the tooter home with me
now.”

“The tooter? For that?
You didn’t do the spell right.”
Rhn stared at him indig-
nantly. “You mean, you’re
not going to give me the toot-
er after all the trouble I went
to? I only did it as a fay or,
really. Neeshan, I think it’s
very mean of you.”

“Try the spell again.”

“Oh, dreeze. You’re too im-
patient. You never give any-
thing time to work.”

He got up and walked off.
For the next few days,
everybody in the village
avoided Neeshan. They all felt
sorry for Rhn, who’d worked
so hard, done everything he
was told to, and been cheated
out of his tooter by Neeshan.
In the end the magician, curs-
ing his own weakness, surren-
dered the tooter to Rhn. The
accusatory atmosphere in the
normally indifferent Free’l
was intolerable.

But now what was he to
do? He’d given up his tooter
— he had to ask Rhn to lend
it to him when he wanted
to contact headquarters — and
the senior rating was no
nearer than before. His head
ached constantly, and all the
spells he performed to cure
the pain left him feeling
wretchedly tired out.

Magic, however, is an art
of many resources, not all of

THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT

them savory. Neeshan, in his
desperation, began to invoke
demons more disreputable
than those he would ordinar-
ily have consulted. In effect,
he turned for help to the
magical underworld.

His thuggish informants
were none too consistent. One
demon told him one thing, an-
other something else. The
consensus, though, was that
while there was nothing the
Free’l actually wanted enough
to go to any trouble for it
(they didn’t even want to get
rid of their nasal drip, for
example — in a perverse way
they were proud of it), there
was one thing they disliked
intensely — Neeshan himself.

The Free’l thought, the
demons reported, that he was
inconsiderate, tactless, offi-
cious, and a crashing bore.
They regarded him as the
psychological equivalent of
the worst case of dreeze ever
known, carried to the nth
power. They wished he’d drop
dead or hang himself.

Neeshan dismissed the last
of the demons. His eyes had
begun to shine. The Free’l
thought he was a nuisance,
did they? They thought he
was the most annoying thing
they’d encountered in the
course of their racial history?
Good. Fine. Splendid. Then
he’d really annoy them.

He’d have to watch out for
poison, of course. But in the
end, they’d turn to magic to
get rid of him. They’d have to.

105

And then he’d have them.
They’d be caught.

One act of communal magic
that really worked and they’d
be sold on magic. He’d be sure
of his senior rating.

NEESHAN began his cam-
paign immediately. Where
the Free’l were, there was he.
He was always on hand with
unwanted explanations, hy-
percritical objections, and
maddening “wouldn’t -it- be -
betters.”

Whereas earlier in his
evangelical mission he had
confined himself to pointing
out how much easier magic
would make life for the Free’l,
he now counciled and advised
them on every phase of their
daily routine, from mud-
smearing to rain-sitting, and
from the time they got up un-
til they went to bed. He even
pursued them with advice
after they got into bed, and
told them how to run their
sex lives — advice which the
Free’], who set quite as much
store by their sex lives as any-
body does, resented passion-
ately.

But most of all he harped
on their folly in putting up
with nasal drip, and instruct-
ed them over and over again
in the details of a charm — a
quite simple charm — for get-
ting rid of it. The charm
would, he informed them,
work equally well against
anything — or person — that
they found annoying.

106

The food the Free’l brought
him began to have a highly
peculiar taste. Neeshan grin-
ned and hung a theriacal
charm, a first-class antidote
to poison, around his neck.
The Free’l’s distate for him
bothered him, naturally, but
he could stand it. When he
had repeated the anti-annoy-
ance charm to a group of
Free’l last night, he had no-
ticed that Rhn was listening
eagerly. It wouldn’t be much
longer now.

On the morning of the day
before the equinox, Neeshan
was awakened from sleep by
an odd prickling sensation in
his ears. It was a sensation
he’d experienced only once be-
fore in his life, during his
novitiate, and it took him a
moment to identify it. Then
he realized what it was. Some-
body was casting a spell
against him.

At last! At last! It had
worked !

Neeshan put on his robe
and hurried to the door of the
hut. The day seemed remark-
ably overcast, almost like
night, but that was caused by
the spell. This one happened
to involve the optic nerves.

He began to grope his way
cautiously toward the village
center. He didn’t want the
Free’l to see him and get sus-
picious, but he did want to
have the pleasure of seeing
them cast their first accurate
spell. (He was well protected
against wind-damage from it,

/MRGARET ST. CLAIR

of course.) When he was al-
most at the center, he took
cover behind a hut. He peered
out.

They were doing it right. Oh,
what a satisfaction! Neeshan
felt his chest expand with
pride. And when the spell
worked, when the big wind
swooped down and blew him
away, the Free'l would cer-
tainly receive a second magi-
cal missionary more kindly.
Neeshan might even come
back, well disguised, himself.

The ritual went on. The
dancers made three circles to
the left, three circles to the
right. Cross over, and all
sprinkle salt on the interstices
of the star Rhn had traced on
the ground with the point of
a knife. Back to the circle.
One to the left, one to right,
while Rhn, in the center of the
circle, dusted over the salt
with — with what ?

“lley!’’ Neeshan yelled in
sudden alarm. “Not brim-
stone! Watch out! You're not
doing it ri — "

His chest contracted sud-
denly, as if a large, stony
hand had seized his thorax
above the waist. He couldn't
breathe, he couldn't think, he

couldn't even say “Ouch!” It
felt as if his chest — no, his
whole body — was being com-
pressed in on itself and turn-
ing into something as hard as
stone.

He tried to wave his tiny,
heavy arms in a counter-
charm; he couldn't even in-
hale. The last emotion he
experienced was one of bitter-
ness. He might have known
the Free'l couldn't get any-
thing right.

The Free'l take a dim view
of the small stone image
that now stands in the center
of their village. It is much too
heavy for them to move, and
while it is not nearly so much
of a nuisance as Neeshan was
when he was alive, it incon-
veniences them. They have to
make a detour around it when
they do their magic dances.

They still hope, though, that
the spells they are casting to
get rid of him will work even-
tually. If he doesn't go away
this autumn, he will the au-
tumn after next. They have a
good deal of faith in magic,
when you come right down to
it. And patience is their long
suit. END

THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT

107

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How Muld any race look so

ferocious and yet he peace-

ful — and devise so nasty a

weapon?

I COULDN’T help listening
to the big spaceman sitting
alone at the corner table. He
wasn’t speaking to me — that
was certain — nor was his flat,
curiously uninflected voice di-
rected at anyone else. With
some sui'prise I realized that
he was talking to himself.
People don’t do that nowa-
days. They’re adjusted.

He noted my raised eye-
brows and grinned, his square
teeth white against the dark
planes of his face. “I’m not
psycho,’’ he said. “It’s just a
bad habit I picked up on
Lyrane.”

“Lyrane?” I asked.

“It hasn’t been entered on
the charts yet. Just discover-
ed.’’ His voice was inflected
now. And then it changed
abruptly. “If you must know,
this is ethanol — CoHjjOHt—

111

and I drink it.” He looked at
me with an embarrassed ex-
pression in his blue eyes. “It’s
just that I’m not used to it
yet,” he explained without ex-
plaining. “It’s easier when I
vocalize.”

“You sure you’re all right?”
I asked. “Want me to call a
psychologician ?”

“No. I’ve just been certified
by Decontamination. I have a
paper to prove it.”

“But—”

“Draw up a chair,” he in-
vited. “I hate to drink alone.
And I’d like to talk to some-
body.”

I smiled. My talent was
working as usual. I can’t walk
into a bar without someone
telling me his life history.
Nice old ladies buttonhole me
at parties and tell me all about
their childhoods. Boys tell me
about girls. Girls tell me about
boys. Politicians spill party
secrets and pass me tips.

Something about me makes
folks want to talk. It’s a tal-
ent and in my business it’s an
asset. You see. I’m a freelance
writer. Nothing fancy or sig-
nificant, just news, popular
stuff, adventure stories, prob-
lem yarns, romances, and mys-
teries. I’ll never go down in
history as a literary great, but
it’s a living — and besides I
meet the damnedest charac-
ters.

So I sat down.

“I guess you’re not conta-
gious if you’ve been through
Decontamination,” I said.

He looked at me across
the rim of an oversized
brandy sniffer — a Napoleon,
I think it’s called — and wag-
gled a long forefinger at my
nose. “The trouble wfith you
groundhogs is that you’re al-
ways thinking we spacers are
walking hotbeds of contagion
all primed to wreck Earth.
You should know better. Any-
thing dangerous has about
as much chance of getting
through Decontamination as
an ice cube has of getting
through a nuclear furnace.”
“There was Martian Fe-
ver,” I reminded him.

“Three centuries ago and
you still remember it,” he
said. “But has there been any-
thing else since Decontamina-
tion was set up?”

“No,” I admitted, “but that
was enough, wasn’t it? We
still haven’t reached the pre-
Mars population level.”

“Who wants to?” He sipped
at the brownish fluid in the
glass and a shudder rippled
the heavy muscles of his chest
and shoulders. He grinned
nastily and took a bigger
drink. “There, that ought to
hold you,” he muttered. He
looked at me, that odd embar-
rassed look glinting in his
eyes. “I think that did it. No
tolerance for alcohol.”

I gave him my puzzled and
expectant look.

He countered with a gesture
at the nearly empty brandy
glass. I got the idea. I signaled
autoservice — a conditioned re-

112

J. F. BONE

flex developed over years of
pumping material out of
spacemen — and slipped my ID
into the check slot of the robot
as it rolled up beside us and
waited, humming expectantly.

“Rum,” the spaceman said.
“Demerara, four ounces.”
“You are cautioned, sir,”
the autoservice said in a flat
mechanical voice. “Demerara
rum is one hundred fifty proof
and is not meant to be ingested
by terrestrial life-forms with-
out prior dilution.”

“Shut up and serve,” I said.
The robot clicked disapprov-
ingly, gurgled briefly inside its
cubical interior and extruded
a pony glass of brownish
liquid. “Sir, you will undoubt-
edly end up in a drunkard’s
grave, dead of hepatic cirrho-
sis,” it informed me virtuous-
ly as it returned my ID card.
I glared as I pushed the glass
across the table.

“Robots,” I said contemptu-
ously. It was lost on that me-
tallic monstrosity. It was al-
ready rolling away toward
another table.

The spaceman poured the
pony glass into his Napoleon,
sniffed appreciatively, sipped
delicately and extended a
meaty hand. “My name’s Hal-
sey,” he said. “Captain Roger
Halsey. I skipper the Two Txvo
Four.”

“The Bureau ship that land-
ed this morning?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m one
of the Bureau’s brave boys.”
There was a faint sneer in his

voice. “The good old Bureau
of Extraterrestrial Explora-
tion. The busy BEE.” He fail-
ed to pronounce the individual
letters. “You’re a reporter,
aren’t you?” he asked sud-
denly.

“How’d you guess?”

“That little trick of not an-
swering an introduction. Most
of you sludge pumpers do it,
but I never knew why.”
“Libel and personal privacy
laws,” I said. “If you don’t
know who we are, you can*t
sue.”

He grinned. “Okay. I don't
care. Keep your privacy. All
I want is someone to talk to.”
I smiled inwardly.

“Think my job’s exciting?”
he asked. “Skipper of an ex-
ploration ship. Poking my nose
into odd corners of the Galaxy.
Seeing what’s over Hie hill.”
“Of course,” I said.

“Well, you’d be wrong
ninety-nine times out of a
hundred. It's just a job. Most
of it is checking — or did you
know that only one sun in ten
has planets, and only one in
ten thousand has a spectrum
that will support human life,
and that only one in ten thou-
sand planets has Earthlike
qualities? So you can imagine
how we felt when we ran
across Lyrane.” He grimaced
wryly. “I had it on the log as
Halsey’s Planet for nearly two
weeks before we discovered it
was inhabited.” He shrugged.
“So the 4iame was changed.
Too bad. Always did want to

113

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

have a planet named after me.
But ni make it yet.”

I clucked sympathetically.
Capt, Halsey sighed, and this
is what he told me.

IT’S a beautiful world, Ly-
rane is. Like Earth must
have been before it got clut-
tered up with people. No
cities, no smoke, no industrial
complexes — ^just green plains,
snowy mountains, dark for-
ests, blue seas, and white polar
caps all wrapped in cotton
clouds swimming in the clear-
est atmosphere you ever saw.
It made my eyes ache to look
at it. And it affected the crew
the same way.

We were wild to land. We
came straight in along the
equatorial plane until we hit
the Van Allen Belt and the
automatics took over. We
stopped dead, matched intrin-
sics and skirted the outer
band, checking the radiation
quality and the shape of the
Belt. It was a pure band that
dipped down at the poles to
form entry zones. There was
not a sign of bulges or indus-
trial contaminants.

Naturally we had every-
thing trained on the planet
while we made our sweeps —
organic detectors, radar, spec-
troanalytic probes — all the
gadgets the BEE equips us
with to make analysis easy
and complete. The readings
were so homelike that every

man was landsick. I wasn’t
any different from the rest of
them, but I was in command
and I had to be cautious about
setting the Two Two Four
down until we’d really wrung
the analytic data dry.

So, while the crew grumbled
about hanging outside on a
skyhook, we kept swinging
around in a polar orbit until
we knew that world below us
like a baby knows its mother.
It checked clean to five decimal
places, which is the limit of
our gadgetry. Paradise, that’s
what it was — a paradise un-
trod by human foot. And
eveiy foot on the ship was
itching.

“When we gonna land.
Skipper?” Alex Baranov ask-
ed me. It was a gross breach
of discipline, but I forgave
him. Alex was the second en-
gineer, an eager kid on his
first flight out from Earth.
Like most youngsters, he
thought there was romance in
space, but right now he was
landsick. Even worse than
most of us. And, like most
kids, he’d leap where angels’d
dread to walk on tiptoe.

“We’ll land,” I assured him.
“You’ll be down there pretty
soon.”

He hurried off to tell the
others.

We set the ship down in the
middle of one of the continen-
tal land masses in an open
plain surrounded by forest
and ran a few more tests be-
fore we stepped out, planted

114

J. F. BONE

the flag, and claimed the place
for the Confederation. After
that we had an impromptu
celebration to thoroughly en-
joy the solid feel of ground
under our feet and open sky
overhead. It lasted all of five
minutes before we came to
our senses and posted a guard.

It was five minutes too long.
Alex Baranov had a chance to
get out of sight and go explor-
ing, and, like a kid, he took it.
We didn’t miss him for nearly
ten minutes more, and in fif-
teen minutes a man can cover
quite a bit of territory.

“Anyone see where he
went?” I asked.

“He was wearing a menti-
com,” one of the crew offered.
“Said he wanted to look
around.”

“The idiot!” I snapped. “He
had no business going off like
that.”

“Nobody told him not to,”
Dan Warren said. Dan was
my executive officer, and a
good hand in case of trouble,
but he left the command deci-
sions to me, and of course I
figured that everybody knew
the cardinal rule of first land-
ings. The net result was that
Alex had disappeared.

I went back into the ship
and broke out another men-
ticom.

“Alex !” I broadcasted. “Re-
turn to ship at once !”

“I can’t, Skipper,” Alex's
projection came back to me,
“I’m surrounded.”

“By what? Where?”

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

“They look sorta human —
bigger than us. I’m near the
edge of the forest nearest the
ship. I can’t do anything. I
didn’t bring a blaster.” There
was panic in his thoughts.
And then suddenly I saw two
hairy bipeds flash across
Alex’s vision. Both of them
were carrying spears. The
nearest one jumped and lung-
ed. The scene dissolved in a
blaze of red panic and the pro-
jection cut off as though some-
one had turned a switch.

I had a fix now and turned
to face a knob of forest jutting
out into the plain. Near the
forest’s edge I saw a flurry of
movement that vanished as I
watched.

“Break out a ’copter,” I or-
dered.

“Why?” Warren asked, and
then I realized that I alone of
all the crew had seen what
had happened to Alex.

I told them.

The search, of course, was
unproductive. I didn’t ex-
pect that it would be anything
else. I was pretty certain that
Alex was a casualty, I’d felt
people die while wearing men-
ticoms, and the same blank
sense of emptiness had blotted
out Alex. It was a bad deal all
around, I liked that kid.

But Alex’s death had pro-
vided data. This world was in-
habited and the inhabitants
weren’t friendly. So I had the
crew stake out a perimeter
which we could energize with

the ship’s engines, and acti-
vated a couple of autoguards
for patrol duty. Alex wasn’t
a pleasant thought, but we
weren’t equipped to retrieve
bodies. So I wrote him in the
log as missing and let it go at
that.

I had to correct the entry a
week later when Alex came
walking up to the perimeter
as large as life and just as
healthy, wearing a mild sun-
burn, a sheepish expression,
and nothing else.

The autoguard announced
his coming and I headed the
delegation that met him. I
read him the riot act, and
after I’d finished chewing on
him he was pinker than ever.

“Okay, sir — so I was a
fool,” he said. “But they didn’t
hurt me. Scared me half to
death, but once they realized
I was intelligent there was no
trouble. They were fascinated
by my clothes.” Alex grinned
ruefully. “And they’re pretty
strong. They peeled me.”

“Obviously,” I said coldly.

“They have a village back
in the woods.” He pointed
vaguely behind him. “It’d pay
to take a look at it.”

“Mister Baranov,” I said.
“If I don’t throw you in the
brig for what you’ve done, it’s
only because you may have
brought back some informa-
tion we can use. What are
these natives like? What did
they do to you besides making
you a strip-tease artist? What
cultural level are they? How

116

many of them do you estimate
there are? What do they look
like? Get up to the ship and
report to Lieutenant Warren
for interrogation and draw
new clothing.” I had the same
half exasperated, half angry
tone that a relieved mother
has when one of her young-
sters returns home late but
unharmed.

Alex must have recognized
it, because he grinned as
he went off.

I contacted Warren on the
intercom. “Dan,” I said, “Ba-
ranov’s back — apparently un-
harmed. I want him given the
works. When you’ve gotten
everything you can get, have
a man detailed to watch him.
If he so much as looks suspi-
cious, heave him in the brig.”
Warren’s answering projec-
tion had a laugh in it. “Always
cautious, hey. Skipper? Okay,
I’ll see that he gets the busi-
ness.”

It turned out that Alex
didn’t have much real infor-
mation except for a descrip-
tion of the natives, their vil-
lage, and their attitude toward
him. It was about what you’d
expect from a kid, interesting
but far from helpful.

The delegation of natives
showed up a half hour later.
They came walking across the
open space between the ship
and the forest as though they
hadn’t a care in the world.
Four of them — ^big hairy hu-
manoids, carrying spears.

J. F. BONE

They were naked as animals.
Not that they needed clothes
with all that hair, but just the
same their appearance gave
me a queasy feeling — like I
was looking at man’s early an-
cestors suddenly come to life.

If you can imagine a furry
humanoid seven feet tall, with
the face of an intelligent go-
rilla and the braincase of a
man, you’ll have a rough idea
of what they looked like — ex-
cept for their teeth. The ca-
nines would have fitted better
in the face of a tiger, and
showed at the corners of their
wide, thin-lipped mouths, giv-
ing them an expression of
ferocity.

They came trotting straight
across the plain, moving with
grace and power. All external
signs pointed to them being a
carnivorous, primitive race.
Hunters, probably. The mus-
cles of my scalp twitched as
some deep-buried instinct in-
side me whispered, “Competi-
tion!”

I’VE met plenty of human-
oids, but these were the
first that roused any emotion
other than curiosity. Perhaps
it was their fierce appearance,
or the bright, half-contemptu-
ous intelligence in their eyes,
or the confident arrogance in
their approach, or merely that
they looked more like us than
the others I had met. What-
ever it was, it was strong, and
I had the impression that the
feeling was mutual.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

“Stop!” I said as they ap-
proached the periphery.

“Why should we?” the fore-
most native replied in perfect
Terran.

“Because that barrier’ll
bum you to a nice crisp cinder
if you don’t.”

“That’s a good reason,” the
native said, nodding.

Then the delayed reaction
took over and the shock nearly
floored me, until I saw' that
he was w'earing Alex’s men-
ticom. Well, that explained the
language and the feeling of
mutual distrust — and it could
explain why I thought Alex
had died back there in the jun-
gle. A mental communicator
snatched from its wearer’s
head can give that impression.

But it raised an entirely
new set of questions. Where
did this savage learn to oper-
ate the circlet and how did he
recognize its purpose? I guess
I w'asn’t too smart, because
the native was tuned to me
and I wasn’t shielding my
thoughts at all.

He chuckled — it sounded
like the purr of a cat. “We are
not stupid, Earthman.”

“So I see,” I said uneasily.

“I am K’wan, chief of this
segment. 1 wish to know why
you are here.”

“To survey your world. We
are members of the Bureau of
Extraterrestrial Exploration.
It is our job to make surveys
of planets.”

“Why?”

“For trade, colonization,

117

and exploitation,” I answered.
There was no sense in giving
him a dishonest explanation.
With him wearing that com-
municator, it would have done
no good to try.

“And what have you de-
cided about us?”

“That’s not our job. We just
investigate and report. What
happens next is not our affair.
But if you’re worrying — don’t.
There are plenty of worlds
available without bothering
inhabited places. Since you
are intelligent, we would prob-
ably like to trade with you, if
you have anything to trade —
but that, of course, is up to
you. We never intrude where
we are not wanted, as long as
we are treated with respect.
If we are attacked, however,
that is a different story.” It
was the old respect-and-threat
routine that worked with
primitive races. But I wasn’t
at all sure it was working
npw.

“Strange,” K’wan said. “I
would have sworn you were
a predatory race. You are
enough like us to be our little
cousins.” He scratched his
head with a surprisingly hu-
man gesture. “In your posi-
tion I would have attacked to
show my power and inspire
respect. Perhaps you are tell-
ing the truth.”

“A predator can grow soft
when he has too much prey,”
1 said.

“Aye, there is truth in that.
But what is too easy and how

118

much is too much? And does
a man change his habits of
eating just because he is fat?”
“You can find out.”

“I do not think that would
be wise,” the native said. “Al-
though you are physically
weak, you sound confident.
Therefore you are strong. And
strength is to be respected. Let
us be friends. We will make an
agreement with you.”

1 SHOOK my head. “It is not
our place to make agree-
ments. We only observe.”
“You have not done much of
that,” he said pointedly. “You
sit here and send your ma-
chines over our seas and for-
ests, but you do not see for
yourselves. You cannot learn
this way.”

“We learn enough,” I said
shortly.

“We have talked of you at
our council,” K’wan continued,
“and we think that you should
know more before you depart.
So we have come to make you
an offer. Let four of your men
come with me, and four of
mine will stay with you. We
will exchange — and you can
see our ways while we see
yours. That would help us un-
derstand each other.”

It sounded reasonable. An
exchange of hostages — or call
it a cultural exchange, if you’d
prefer. I told him that I’d
think it over and to come back
tomorrow. He nodded, tunied,
and together with his retinue
disappeared into the jungle.

J. F. BONE

WE HASHED K’wan’s
proposal over at a board
meeting that night and de-
cided that we’d take it. The
exact status of Lyranian cul-
ture worried us. It is a cardi-
nal rule never to underesti-
mate an alien culture or to
judge it by surface appear-
ances. So we organized a team
that would form our part of
the “cultural exchange.”

I would go, of course. If
K’wan could visit us, I could
hardly stay back. Alex was
selected partly because he was
an engineer, mostly because
he’d been over the ground
before. Ed Barger, our ecolo-
gist, and Patrick Allardyce,
our biologist, made up the re-
mainder of the party. I’d have
liked to take the padre and
Doc, but Doc was more valua-
ble at base, and if I could have
only four men, I wanted fight-
ing men.

“Now,” I said, “we’ll take
along a tight-beam communi-
cator. Coupled to our menti-
coms, it should be able to
reach the ship and put what
we see and what happens on
permanent record.” Then I
turned to Dan Warren. “If
anything goes wrong, don’t try
to rescue us. Finish your ob-
servations and get out. You
understand? And get those ex-
change natives into Interroga-
tion. Condition them to the
eyeballs with cooperation dog-
ma. We may need some
friends here when the second
echelon makes a landfall.”

Warren nodded. I didn’t
have to elaborate.

The native village was
about what I expected from
our reconnaissance flights. It
was beautifully camouflaged.
You couldn’t tell it from the
rest of the forest except that
the trees were larger and were
hollow — apparently hewn out
with patient care to make a
comfortable living space in-
side. Lyranians lived in one
place, if what I could see of
their dwellings was any crite-
rion. I wanted to look inside,
but K’wan hustled us down the
irregular “street” that wound
through the grove of giant
trees until we finally came to
the granddaddy of them all, a
trunk nearly forty feet in
diameter.

K’wan gestured at the tree.
“Your house while you are
here. We made it for you
Earthmen.” His voice came
over my menticom and was
duly recorded on the ship,
since we were in constant con-
tact, giving our impressions
of the place. So far it was
strictly SOP.

“Thanks,” I said. “We ap-
preciate it.” I was really
touched at this tribute. K’wan
had probably evacuated his
own house to furnish us quar-
ters where we could be to-
gether. The size of it indicated
that it must be the chief’s
residence. But like all primi-
tives he had to lie a little and
the fiction of making this place
for us was a way of salvaging

119

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

pSide in the face of our tech-
nological superiority.

He walked inside and we
followed, expecting to find a
gloomy hole — but instead the
room glowed with a soft light
that came from the walls
themselves. The air was cool
and comfortable, a pleasing
contrast to the heat outside.

“What the — ” I began, but
Allardyce was already peering
at the walls.

“A type of luminous fun-
gus,” he said. “A saprophyte.
Lives on the wood of this tree
and gives off light. Clever.”

I shut my mouth and looked
around. There were other
rooms opening off this one and
along one wall a knobby imita-
tion of a staircase led upward
to a hole overhead.

“Hmmm, a regular sky-
scraper,” Ed Barger com-
mented, noting the direction
of my gaze. “Well, we should
not be crowded, at any rate.”
I had been noticing some-
thing was wrong without re-
alizing it. You know the feel-
ing you get when you’ve lost
something, but can’t quite re-
member what it was. Then my
neurons made connections and
I realized that the communi-
cator and the menticom were
both as dead as if we were in
a lead box.

Quietly I moved to the door
— and Dan’s voice hammered
in my ears : “Skipper ! Answer
me! What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Dan,” I said. “We
just went into the quarters

120

they assigned us. Something
about them blocks transmis-
sion and reception. We’re all
fine.”

“Oh.” Dan sounded relieved.
“For a minute I was wor-
ried.”

“One of the boys’ll call in
every two hours,” I assured
him. “If you don’t hear from
us then, it’ll be time to do
something.”

“Okay, Skipper, but what’ll
I do?”

“That’ll be your decision,”
I said. “You’ll be ranking offi-
cer.”

Dan’s chuckle was humor-
less. “Thanks, but I hope we
keep on hearing from you.”

“Don’t worry — you will.
These people look worse than
they really are. At least they
have been nice so far.”

“They’d better stay that
way,” Dan replied grimly.

It was my turn to chuckle.
“Keep calm and keep your
blasters dry. I’m going inside
now. You’ll hear from us in
two hours.”

Ed BARGER looked at me a
trifle oddly as I came
through the doorway. “A
while ago you were laughing
at that story K’wan was tell-
ing us about making this
house for us. I caught your
undertone.”

“Sure. What about it?”
“Well, I’m not so sure he
was lying.”

“Huh?”

“Take a look around you.”

J. F. BONE

I did. It was a nice room,
considering its origin — low
benches around the walls, a
table and four chairs in the
center, a soft, thick floor cov-
ering that was a pleasure to
the feet.

“See anything unusual?”
Ed asked.

“No,” I said.

“What about those bench-
es?”

“They’re part of the walls,”
I said, “cut out of the tree
when it was hollowed out.”

“Cut to our size?”

I did a double take. Barger
was right. The Lyranians
were seven feet tall and long-
legged, but the benches were
precisely right for human sit-
ting, and the table in the cen-
ter was only three feet above
the gray floor. Suddenly I
didn’t feel so good.

“And those rooms — ^there
are four of them — scaled to
people our size ?”

I shrugged. “So they modi-
fied the joint for us.”

“You still don’t get it. This
place is living. It’s growing.
Nothing here except those
chairs isn’t part of this tree,
and I’m not sure that they
weren’t. Besides, how did they
know that there’d be four of
us?”

“They could have been hope-
ful, or maybe four is their
idea of a delegation. Remem-
ber there were four of them
that visited us, and they sug-
gested that four of us visit
them.”

“It’s obvious,” Allardyce
added, "that this place has
been made for us. K’wan
wasn’t lying.”

Barger shook his head. “I
still don’t like it. I think we’3
better get out of here. If they
are as good biologists as this
tree indicates, they’re a Class
VI civilization at least — and
we’re not set up to handle lev-
els that high.”

“I don’t think that’s neces-
sary,” Allardyce said. “They
don’t seem unfriendly, and un-
til they do, we’re better off
sitting pat and playing the
cards as they’re dealt. We can
always warn the ship in case
anything goes wrong.”

“Don’t be jumpy,” Alex
broke in. “I told you they were
all right. They grew the place
for me. It’s just grown a little
since.”

I made a noncommittal
noise.

“It’s true,” Alex said.
“While I was here I needed
quarters and nobody wanted
me in with them. They have
some custom about not letting
strangers in their houses after
sunset. So they took a sapling
and sprayed it with some sort
of stuff and by the next “after-
noon I had a one-room house.”
“Where did you stay that
first night?” I demanded.

Alex shrugged. “In one of
the trees down the street,” he
said, pointing through the
door. “It was some sort of a
storage warehouse. No air
conditioning and blacker than

121

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

the inside of the Coal Sack. It
rains pretty bad at night and
they had to give me some
shelter.”

He was right on time with
his last statement, because the
skies opened up and started to
pour. The four-hour evening
rain had begun. It had fasci-
nated us at first, the regular-
ity with which the evening
showers arrived and left, but
our meteorologist assured us
that it was a perfectly natural
phenomenon in a planet with
no axial tilt.

“But growing a tree in a
day is fantastic,” I said.
“What’s more, it’s unbelieva-
ble, a downright — ”

“Not so fantastic,” Allar-
dyce interrupted. “This really
isn’t a tree. It’s a cycad — re-
lated to the horsetail ferns
back on Earth. They grow
pretty fast anyway and they
might grow faster here. Be-
sides, the Lyranians could
have some really potent
growth stimulants. In our
hydroponics stations we use
delta-gibberelin. That’ll grow
tomatoes from seed in a week,
and forage crops in three days.
It could be that they have
something better that’ll do the
job in hours.”

“And one that makes a tree
grow rooms?” I scoffed.

ALLARDYCE nodded. “It’s
possible, but I hate to
think of the science behind it
— it makes me feel like a blind
baby fumbling in the dark —

122

and I’m supposed to be a good
biologist.” He shivered. “Their
science’ll be centuries ahead
of ours if that is true.”

“Not necessarily,” Barger
said. “They could be good bi-
ologists or botanists and no-
thing much else. We’ve run
into that sort of uneven cul-
ture before.”

“Ha!” Allardyce snorted.
“That shows how little you
know about experimental bi-
ology. Anybody able to do with
plants what these people do
would have to know genetics
and growth principles, bio-
chemistry, mathematics, engi-
neering and physics.”

“Maybe they had it once
and lost most of it,” I suggest-
ed. “They wouldn’t be the first
culture that’s gone retrograde.
We did it after the Atomic
Wars and we were several
thousand years recovering.
But we hadn’t lost the skills —
they just degenerated into
rituals administered by witch
doctors who handed the for-
mulas and techniques down
from father to son. Maybe it’s
like that here. Certainly these
people give no evidence of an
advanced civilization other
than these trees and their na-
tive intelligence. Civilized peo-
ple don’t hunt with spears or
live in tribal groups.”

Barger nodded. “That’s a
good point. Skipper.”

“Well, there’s no sense
speculating about it; maybe
we’ll know if we wait and
see,” Allardyce summed up.

J. F. BONE

I set sentries, three hours
on and nine off, to keep Dan
informed of our situation, and
since rank has its privileges,
I took the first watch. We were
all tired from our walk
through the woods ; the others
turned in readily enough. I
was sufficiently worried about
the hints and implications in
the native culture to keep alert
— but nothing happened. I
checked in with Dan back at
the ship and went to awaken
Alex, who had drawn the sec-
ond watch, and turned in to
the bedroom allotted to me.
Normally I can sleep any-
where, but I kept thinking
about houses grown from trees
and upholstery grown from
fungus, about spear-carrying
savages who understood the
working principle of a men-
ticom.

It was all wrong and my
facile explanation of a regress-
ed cultui’e didn’t satisfy me.
Superior technology and sav-
agery simply didn’t go to-
gether. Even in our Interreg-
num Period, islands of culture
and technology had remained,
and men hadn’t reverted to
complete savagery. But there
were no such islands on this
world — or none that were ap-
parent.

Such enclaves couldn’t have
escaped our search mecha-
nisms, which are designed
precisely to locate such things.
And besides, an advanced bi-
ological technology would have
no need for hunting or spears.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

They could grow all the food
they needed. Any damn fool
knew that. Then why the noble
savage act? For if our analysis
was right, it must be an act.
Why were they trying to hood-
wink us ? The only answer was
that there was a high civiliza-
tion here that was being delib-
erately hidden from us. The
only mistake they had made
was in underestimating us —
the old story of civilized men
sneering at savages, but in
reverse.

The trees, therefore, must
be such old and primitive tech-
niques that they thought noth-
ing of them, deeming them so
inconsequential that even sav-
ages like us would know of
them and not be suspicious.
At that, they probably didn’t
have too much time after they
detected us orbiting and in-
tending to land. And if that
were true, there could be only
one place where their civiliza-
tion was hidden.

1 TRIED to get to my feet,
to warn the others — but I
couldn’t move and no sound
came from my flaccid vocal
cords. I was paralyzed, help-
less, and K’wan’s amused
thought floated gently into my
brain. “I told the others that
you humans were an advanced
race, but they couldn’t believe
an obviously warlike species
that depended upon machinery
could be anything but savages.
And your man Alex confirmed
their beliefs. So we tried to

123

meet you on your own ground
— savage to savage, as it were.
It seems as though we weren’t
as good at being savages as we
thought.” And K’wan stepped
through an apparently solid
section of tree trunk that
parted to let him pass !

This tree was nothing but a
mousetrap, and we were the
mice! Why hadn’t one of us
carried the discussion a bit
further? Any idiot should
know that biological agents
were fully as deadly as physi-
cal ones. And these people
were self-admittedly predato-
ry. Contempt at my stupidity
was the only emotion that fill-
ed my mind — that we would
be trapped like a flock of
brainless sheep and led bleat-
ing happily to slaughter. Raw
anger surged through me,
smothering my fear in a red
blanket of rage.

K’wan shook his head.
“Your reaction works against
you. It’s primitive — and, I
think, dangerous. We cannot
risk associating with a race
that cannot control them-
selves. You have developed too
fast — too soon. We are an old
race and a slow race, and our
warlike days are far behind
us. The council was right.
Something must be done about
you or there will be more of
your kind on Lyrane — ^hard,
driving, uncontrolled, violent.”
He sighed — a very human
sigh — half regret, half resig-
nation.

“And you promised no harm

124

would come to us if we came
with you,” I thought bitterly.

“I said you would come to
no harm, nor will you. You’ll
just be changed a little.”

“Like Alex?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do to him?”
He grinned, exposing his
long tusks. “You’ll find out,”
he said. He sounded just like
a villain in a cheap melo-
drama.

He took the menticom cir-
clet off my head and all com-
munication stopped. Two oth-
er Lyranians stepped through
the wall, lifted me and carried
me out like a shanghaied
drunk from a spaceport bar.
I wasn’t particularly sur-
prised at the laboratory that
lay behind the wall. After all,
an observation cage had to
have its laboratory facilities.

These were good — very
good indeed. Even though I
knew hardly anything about
biological laboratories, there
was no doubt that here were
the products of an advanced
technology. I hated to admit
it, but it looked as though we
had run into what we had al-
ways feared but had never
found — a civilization superior
to ours. From the windowless
appearance of the place, it was
probably underground, and
K’wan’s look and nod seemed
to confirm my guess.

They laid me out on a table,
took blood and tissue samples
and proceeded to forget me
while they ran tests and analy-

J. F. BONE

ses. I kept trying to move, but
it wasn’t any use.

A group of about a dozen
oldsters came in, looked at me
and went away. The council,
1 guessed.

In a surprisingly short time
K’wan came back, distinguish-
able by the menticom circlet.
He was holding something
that looked like a jet hypo in
his hand. The barrel was full
of a cloudy red liquid that
swirled sluggishly behind the
confining glass.

“This won’t hurt,” he said,
his thoughts amplified by the
circlet.

He lifted my arm, examined
it and nodded. There was a
high-pitched, sibilant hiss as
he touched the trigger of the
syringe and I felt a brief sting
near my elbow.

“There — that’s that!” he
said. “Now we’ll take you back
and get the others.”

I swore at him coldly and
viciously.

He smiled.

Alex helped lay me back on
my bed in the tree house. He
looked down at me and grin-
ned. It wasn’t a pleasant grin.
It reminded me of a crocodile.

Naked, I was standing on
an endless sandy plain. Off
in the distance the Two Two
Four stood on her landing
jacks, a tall, needle-pointed
tower of burnished silver
metal. The sun beat down
from a cobalt sky burning my
bare back as I trudged pain-

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

fully across the hot shifting
sand. My feet, scorched and
blistered, sent agony racing
through me with every step I
took toward the tall silver col-
umn that seemed to recede
from me as fast as I ap-
proached. My throat was
choked with dust and my
mind filled with fear and pain.

I had to reach the ship. I
had to. Yet I knew with dread-
ful certainty that I would not.

He came at me from a hol-
low in the sandy ground, a
huge, furry Lyranian — bigger
than any I had seen. His white
tusks glittered in the sunlight
as he leaped at me.

Twisting, I avoided him and
turned to run. To fight that
mountain of fanged flesh was
futile. He could rip me apart
with one hand. But I moved
with viscid slowness, stum-
bling through the shifting
sands.

In a moment he was upon
me, clutching with his huge
hands, snapping at my throat
with his tusked mouth. Fear
pumped adrenalin into my
system and I fought as I had
never fought before, break-
ing his holds, throwing jar-
ring punches into his fanged
face as he clawed and bit at
me.

With a violent effort I broke
away and ran again toward
the safety of the distant ship.
For a moment I left him be-
hind as he scrambled to re-
gain his feet and came run-
ning after me. He was on me

125

again, hands reaching for my
throat. I couldn’t get away.
And again we fought, batter-
ing and clawing at each other,
using fists, feet and teeth,
biting and gouging. His
strength was terrible and his
hot, fetid breath was rank in
my nostrils. With a grunt of
triumph he tripped me and I
fell on my back on the blaz-
ing sand. I screamed as my
back struck the searing sur-
face, but he held me helpless
and immovable, pinned be-
neath his massive, crushing
weight.

And then he began to eat
me!

I felt his sharp fangs sink
into my shoulder muscles and
meet in my flesh. With a rush
of frantic strength I threw
him off again and again, ran
stumbling across the plain.
Once more he caught me and
again we fought.

It went on endlessly — the
fight, the temporary break-
away, the flight, the pursuit,
and the recapture. I wondered
dully why no one on the ship
had seen us. Perhaps they
were looking in the wrong di-
rection, or perhaps they
weren’t even looking. If I sur-
vived this and found that they
hadn’t been on watch — I
snarled and slammed my fist
into the Lyranian’s face.

Both of us were covered
with blood, but he was visibly
weaker. It was no longer a
fight; we were too exhausted
for that. We pawed at each

126

other feebly, and I could de-
tect something oddly like fear
in him now. He couldn’t hold
me — ^but neither could I finish
him.

I gathered my last remain-
ing strength into one last
blow. My torn fist smashed
into his bloody face. He top-
pled to the ground and I fell
beside him, too spent to move.
I lay there panting, watching
him.

He rose to his hands and
knees and came crawling to-
ward me, trembling with
weakness. I felt his smother-
ing weight pinning me as he
fell across me. He twisted
slowly, his fanged mouth
gaping to bite again. His
jaws closed on my arm. I was
done — beaten — too weary and
bruised to care. He had won.
But his teeth couldn’t break
my skin. Like me, he was fin-
ished.

We lay there as the sun
beat down, glaring at each
other with fear and hate. And
suddenly — over us — loomed
the familiar faces of my crew
and the tall tower of the Two
Two Four.

Somehow I had reached the
ship and safety !

1 AWOKE. I was bathed
with sweat. My muscles
were aching and my head was
a ball of fire. I looked around.
Everything seemed normal.
My menticom was on my head
and I was lying on the bed in
the tree house. Painfully I

J. F. BONE

rose to my feet and staggered
into the main room.

“My God ! Skipper, you look
awful!” Allardyce’s voice was
sharp with concern. “What’s
wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered.
“My head’s splitting.”

“Here, sit down. Let me
take a look at you.” Allardyce
produced a thermometer and
stuck it in my mouth.
“Mmmm,” he said worriedly.
“You’ve got fever.”

“I feel like I’ve been
through the mill,” I said.

“We’d better get back to
the ship. Doc should have a
look at you.”

I wanted nothing more than
the familiar safety of the
ship, away from these odd na-
tives and exotic diseases that
struck despite omnivaccina-
tion. And we should get back
before the others fell sick.

“All right, Pat,” I said.
“Contact Dan. Have him send
the big ’copter. We’ll leave at
once.” I discounted the expe-
rience of last night as delir-
ium, but just to make sure, I
checked with Allardyce and
Barger when they, came in.

“Obviously fever,” Barger
said. “Nothing happened to
me like you describe.”

“Nor to me,” Allardyce
said.

I nodded. They were right,
of course, unless the Lyranian
in their dreams had eaten and
absorbed them. Then — but
that was sheer nonsense. I
was being a suspicious fool.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

But that dream — all of it —
had been damnably real.

We made our excuses to
K’wan as the ’copter fluttered
down into a nearby clearing.

“I’m sorry about this,”
K’wan said apologetically,
“but I never thought of the
possibility of diseases. We are
all immune. We do have some
biological skill, as you’ve
surely guessed, but our en-
gineering technology is far in-
ferior to yours. We thought
it would be better not to let
you know about us until we
had a chance to observe you.
But you undoubtedly have
seen enough to deduce our
culture.” He grinned — a fe-
rocious grimace that exposed
his long tusks. “I suppose we
are rather bad liars. But then
we’re not accustomed to de-
ception.”

“I understand,” I said.
“You had no way of knowing
what we were really like. We
could have been the advance
guard of a conquering space
armada. You showed great
courage to open relations with
us.”

“Not as great as yours. We
had the opportunity of exam-
ining your man Alex. You had
only his untried opinions to
go by.”

The ’copter came down with
a flutter of rotor blades, and
I shook hands with K’wan.
For a moment I was tempted
to call Dan and tell him to
turn our hostages loose, but
on second thought decided

127

that could wait. I slipped my
menticom off. There was no
point in broadcasting my
thoughts, and without the
gadget KVan couldn't inter-
cept them unless they were
directed. After all, we were
a minority on this world and
Earth didn't even know where
we were yet. A ship can cross
hyper-space far more easily
and quickly than the most
powerful transmitter can
broadcast across normal
space. It would be a thousand
years before Earth could hear
from us by radio, even if they
could distinguish our mes-
sages from stellar interfer-
ence. While I felt oddly
friendly, there was no reason
to take chances, especially if
there was any truth in that
dream.

“You will be leaving soon?"
K'wan asked. “You and the
ship?”

“Yes," I said. “We have
done all we can do here."

I looked up at him. He was
standing there — holding the
menticom in his hand — yet I
understood him!

I didn't let the astonish-
ment show on my face,
nor the shock that coursed
through my mind when the
Lyranian in my brain tried
vainly to scream a waiming!
Instead I took the circlet and
turned to go.

“Remember what you are
to do; the others will help,"
K'wan said.

“I will remember," I re-

plied. You' re damn ivell right
ril remember, 1 thought grim-

ly.

The Lyranian was supposed
to wreck the ship.

He waved farewell as I
turned to enter the ’cop-
ter. “Our thoughts go with
you for your success,” he said.

The Lyranian in my brain
screamed and struggled, but I
held him easily. I was his mas-
ter, not he mine. There would
be no sabotage on the Two
Two Four. He wouldn’t wreck
my ship.

“Dan,” I said as we went
into orbit, “did Alex come
aboard?”

“Of course.”

“Where is he?”

“Down in the engine room,
I suppose, or in his bunk. It’s
not his watch.”

“Maybe you’d better check.
But before you do — ”

He waited for me to con-
tinue, and finally I was able
to.

“Put Allardyce, Barger,
and myself in the brig,” I
said. “Set a guard over us
with instructions to shoot if
we try to make a break. Then
get Alex, if he’s aboard.
Frankly, I don’t think you’ll
find him. They didn’t need a
ship’s commander, a sociolo-
gist or a biologist, but they
did need an engineer. Now get
going. This is an order!”
Warren stiffened. “Yes,
sir — sorry, sir!”

Inside my skull, the Lyran-

J. F. BONE

128

ian came to life — struggled
briefly — and then quit. Bar-
ger, Allardyce and I spent the
rest of the trip home in the
air-conditioned, radiation-re-
sistant, germproof, dustproof,
escape-resistant brig. Alex, of
course, wasn’t aboard. There
aren’t many places on a star-
ship where a man can hide,
and the crew searched them
all.

Even so, I kept worrying
about the ship’s safety all the
way back. It was a miserable
trip. I suppose it was just as
miserable for the Lyranians in
my two companions who kept
worrying about how to de-
stroy us. It didn’t do them any
good either. They never got a
chance, and ultimately we
reached Decontamination.

Barger and Allardyce are
up there now. The medics
think they can erase the Ly-
ranians with insulin shock,
but it’ll take time. Mine, be-
ing a nice, tame one, was con-
sidered to be more valuable in
me than out. We’re going to
have to know a lot about Ly-
rane in a huriy if we’re going
to do anything about those
people, and my Lyranian can
tell us plenty.

But I’ll bet we’ll find things
different on Lyrane when we
go back. They’ll have at least
ten years, and with the brains
they’ve got — and Alex’s brain
to pick— they’ll do just fine
from an engineering point of
view. I’ll bet they’ll even have
spaceships.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

From what I can gather
from my alter ego, they
checked Alex’s brain and
didn’t like what they saw.
That’s the trouble with ro-
mantics. They always re-
member the wars and the
fighting, never the stodgy,
peaceful interims. But you
simply don’t spring that sort
of stuff on a culture like Ly-
rane’s. And I suppose my
anger didn’t help things any,
but if not for that anger and
my primitive bull-headedness,
we might not be here-

III

CAPT. Halsey hurriedly
downed the rum. “Skip-
pers are picked because
they’re tough-minded and au-
thoritarian. In space you need
it occasionally. Fortunately I
lived up to specifications. A
peaceful sort like my Lyran-
ian just couldn’t take it — for-
tunately.”

“Fortunately?” I asked.
“Sure. What else? Possibly
those natives we conditioned
would help our case, possibly
not. And in the meantime the
Lyranians would suck Alex
dry. And with the Tivo Two
Four gone it’d be maybe a
couple of hundred years be-
fore we ran into them again,
and by then they’d really be
ready — loaded for bear with
itchy trigger fingers — and we
just might have a war on our
hands. As it is we’ll send out
a battle fleet to give some au-

129

thority to our negotiators so
no one will get hurt. They just
shouldn't have picked Alex as
typical of us. With his atti-
tude and our weapons, they
naturally got a lot of wrong
ideas.”

‘‘Wrong?” I prompted the
skipper.

Halsey chuckled. “Yes,
that's what I said — wrong
ideas,” he said in that remote
second voice. “Just because
you've forgotten self-defense
doesn't mean that other peace-
ful civilizations don't remem-
ber it.”

END

Underwater Water Manipulators

A vast area some 47 times larger than the United States exists on earth.
Comparatively, it’s unused, unexplored. Economically, it’s vital to the
continued development of this planet. Potentially, it’s accessible — much
more so than anything in space.

Yet, in reality its atmosphere turns to solid rock in the most important
areas during parts of every year. And even where it remains fluid, the
‘‘atmosphere” is as unbreathable as the moon’s vacuum; its gravity as
light as Mars’; its pressure as heavy as Jupiter’s.

It is, of course, the 140 million square miles of terrestrial real estate
covered with water and ice.

Underwater manipulation, like “planetary’^ engineering of science fic-
tion, takes place in a completely alien environment and has problems
unlike anything on earth. The question of keeping water liquid in sub-
freezing winter at low cost is answered by these underwater manipulators.
Year-around water commerce is part of the promise.

Not only have underwater researchers found out how to keep water
from freezing economically in 20 to 80 below zero weather, but also are
developing new piers, aerators, wave control methods, propellers, under-
water tools ... as reported by Industrial Research. Largely as a result
of IGY explorations, scientists are looking to the seas to solve problems
now becoming unsolvable on land or on the water’s surface: new sources
of oil, manganese, cobalt, copper, gold, and other resources; water trans-
lX)rtation impervious to storms; undetectable military installations; un-
limited (by eicreage) farms for both crops and seastock.

The potential is as vast as the imagination.

130

J. F. BONE

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Full text of "Worlds of IF (January 1960)"

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